Social work in Scotland: lessons for America.

The article presents information on social services in Scotland, which were consolidated at the local level of authority into unified social work departments. Personal social services in Scotland were administered previously by several governmental and voluntary agencies. The arguments for unification of personal social services in Scotland stemmed from prevalence of such problems as gaps in service, the complexity and inaccessibility of service, overlapping services, waste of resources and inefficiency in using the scarce resources of skilled professional staff. These problems all of which are familiar to social workers in the United States indicated Scotland's need to develop a coherent social policy. To develop the new social policy the old systems had to be restructured. Some consequences of the Social Work Act of 1968 are firstly local social work services for child care, welfare, mental health, and probation were unified. Secondly local authority social work departments were established. Thirdly area teams with ten to fifteen members, many of whom had a variety of levels of training, were established to serve approximately 50000 people and home helps were also available to serve them. The act indicated specifically the responsibilities of the social work departments to administer a variety of institutions for children and the elderly and to provide hostels for the handicapped.