How Social Will Social Work Be?

The article presents information on the status of social work. As a restless response to a dynamic society, social work in the United States has continued to evolve, adding new functions, surrendering certain old prerogatives, accumulating knowledge, developing new skills, and modifying certain of its underlying assumptions. In this process of gradual transformation there has been, of course, a basic continuity. There is substantial evidence behind the assertion that the professions have a uniquely important place in our culture and that their functioning has a vital impact on the entire society. One important key to an understanding of the nature of the decisions with which social work is faced is to be found in the profession's status problems. At the present time it must be admitted that social work is not yet a high status profession. Be that as it may, the fact of relatively low prestige is well established as is the existence of strong professional strivings for higher status. Yet, paradoxically enough, social workers are very different from most status-seeking middle class groups in so far as they tend to identify, on matters of social policy, with their clients rather than with the other professions or with the dominant socioeconomic class.