Honoring Our Ancestors

The US social work profession has historically claimed primarily middle-class white women as the "founders" of the profession, including Jane Addams and Mary Richmond. Scholarship of the history of the profession has focused almost entirely on settlement houses, anti-poverty advocacy, and charity in the late 1800s in the northeastern United States as the groundwork of current social work practice. Courses in social work history socialize students into this historical framing of the profession and perpetuate a white supremacist narrative of white women as the primary doers of social justice work that colonizes the bodies and knowledge of Indigenous people and their helping systems. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the US have always had indigenous systems of social care. Yet, the social justice work of BIPOC, and especially Indigenous people in the US, is left out of the dominant narrative of the history of social work practice for several reasons including racism, colonialism, and white supremacy. In this paper the authors contribute to the critique of the role of white supremacy as a colonizing process in social work history narratives and discuss frameworks for decolonizing social work pedagogy through a reconciliatory practice that aims to dismantle white supremacy.

Whitewashing of Social Work History

Severe racial inequity has characterized the incorporation of ethnic minorities’ contributions to U.S. history and advancements (Sandoval et al., 2016). These disparities are inextricably connected to White Supremacist ideologies and practices, and are perpetuated in higher education through textbooks, pedagogy, and research. Social work, like many disciplines, teaches about its early roots with a whitewashed historical lens. Indeed, review of the social work literature reveals the scarcity of attributions to Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). Without a more racially diverse perspective on social work’s history, social work scholars promote and sustain White Supremacy. The implications of this are crucial since social work education is predominantly populated by privileged White students who adopt this mentality, unaware of Black, Brown, Latino, Asian, Native or Other ethnic “Jane Addams” who have massively promoted the social welfare of communities for decades without historical recognition or the privileged positions of Addams and Richmond. Historical distortions also potentially discourage BIPOC social work students’ self-efficacy and future efforts to contribute and excel in the discipline. To properly address this issue, social work history must be refaced with a more equitable and just lens. This review seeks to address the gap in the literature pertaining to the need for a greater integration and infusion of racially diverse social work historical contributions in several ways. Recommendations will be made for future research in this area to dismantle racist perspectives in social work history, and strategies will be offered to help social work educators and researchers address this critical issue.

Introduction

The genesis of this book was a casual suggestion at a meeting of the Social Work History Network. Why don’t we do something to mark 50 years since BASW was formed in 1970, the Local Authority Social Services Act was passed and a unified social work training was about to be introduced? And this book is the something....

Examining my place in social work history: a scholarly personal narrative

The social work profession began in the early 1900s and has changed and evolved in many ways since then. The author raises the question: ‘Am I who the founding mothers of social work imagined when they began their work?’ Looking at the values of the profession with a focus on social justice and language, the author explores how she is working towards social justice and how it fits into the historical perspective of the profession.

Indícios para a história do Serviço Social a partir da Justiça de Transição

Resumo − Este trabalho decorre da pesquisa (recente e em curso) intitulada Mulheres na linha de frente, que faz uma articulação entre violência estatal e violência de gênero às práticas de tortura perpetradas no período da ditadura civil-militar no Brasil (1964-1985), no âmbito do estado do Rio de Janeiro. No decorrer desse estudo, foram encontrados dados que possibilitam situar o Serviço Social na história – apesar de não ser seu objeto privilegiado. Assim, a partir de evidências reveladas pelo campo da Justiça de Transição pode-se melhor avaliar a participação de assistentes sociais nos movimentos de resistência desse período da formação social brasileira, a partir de um corpus documental identificado pelas Comissões de Verdade, Memória e Reparação. Palavras-Chave: Serviço Social; história; justiça de transição; movimento social. Abstract − This work stems from a recent (and ongoing) research entitled Women on the front line, which links state violence and gender violence to torture practices perpetrated during the period of the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), in the state of Rio de Janeiro. In the course of this study, data have been found that make it possible to situate social work in history – although not as its privileged subject. Thus, from evidence revealed by the field of transitional justice, it is possible to evaluate better the participation of social workers in the resistance movements of this period of social formation in Brazil, based on a documentary corpus identified by the Commissions of Truth, Memory and Reparation. Keywords: social work; history; transitional justice; social movements.

Art and Social Work: History and Collaborative Possibilities for Interdisciplinary Synergy

This article will stretch the boundaries of the interdisciplinary lens to consider the history of and current potential for the arts to enhance, advance, and amplify individual, family, and community social change goals of the social work profession. To begin, consider the following questions: What would inspire artists and social workers to intentionally work together to reveal new strengths, energy, and capacity in the areas we care about? What do the arts have to teach the profession of social work and vice versa? How have the arts already played a role in the profession, and what has impaired social work’s ability to make greater use of the strengths associated with the arts? How have other professions (public health, psychology, education, and others) incorporated partnerships with the arts? This article concludes with a call to action to advance the potential of the arts in coordination with social work and related disciplines.

Using Prosopography to Raise the Voices of Those Erased in Social Work History

In this article, we introduce prosopography, a valuable historical research method that can be used by feminist social work scholars. While feminists in various fields use this methodology to investigate background characteristics of women in history through collective studies of how they have established relationships and networks to influence change, our review of the literature suggests that it has been little used in social work. We provide a brief overview of prosopography, strengths and limitations, and an illustration of the method as enacted focusing on the roles of early feminists within the development of nonprofit human service organizations. It is our intent to demonstrate the possibilities of prosopography to identify and understand groups of women who have been erased in social work history.

‘Let Us Go Then, You and I’ – Journeying with Ada Eliot Sheffield

My purpose in this article is to illustrate how framing social work in the life world of Ada Sheffield, a largely forgotten woman, yields not only knowledge and understanding, but may exemplify a way of doing social work history. The article draws on two kinds of material. First, I have developed a provisional, if still incomplete, bibliography of her work, included as an annex to this article. Second, I have searched the various Eliot archives in the USA and England to discover what survives of her correspondence. Through her surviving correspondence with her brother, T S (‘Tom’) Eliot, I take Ada Sheffield’s life experiences and thoughts – her self-consciousness – as the frame, wishing insistently to hear her voice. The article is written largely around a single year, which acts as a point of balance for her life. I conclude with several more direct suggestions for social work implications. I briefly attempt an outline of what would constitute her intellectual biography.