History of Social Work - American History

American History

Following European settlement of northern America, the only social welfare was in the area of public health. When epidemics occurred, quarantine facilities were built to prevent contamination. As populations grew, Almhouses were built to house vulnerable people with no other support, including people with a long term illness or older people without families. The first recorded Almshouse was built in 1713 near Philadelphia by William Penn, and was only open to Quakers. A second one was built nearby in 1728, this time with public money. In 1736 New York opened the Poor House of the City of New York (later renamed Bellevue Hospital) and in 1737 New Orleans opened the Saint John's Hospital to serve the poor of the city. Over the next 80 years, the facilities began to change. The precursors to modern hospitals began to form on the grounds of Almshouses, while the Almshouses themselves focused more and more on vulnerable people.

Modern social work in America has its roots in the mass migrations of the 19th century. Many of the migrants landed in New York and moved to other eastern cities, where mass crowding, led to social problems and ill health. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the United States' first female doctor who set up the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1853. The dispensary was run to assist the poor communities of East Side, and it soon diversified beyond a basic pharmacy, providing social assessments and support to local families. In 1889 Jane Addams was a young medical student who set up Hull House in Chicago to work with poor and immigrant communities. The house was both a community service centre and a social research program. Precursors to modern social work arose in Blackwell's infirmary and in Hull House as health professionals began to work with social determinants of poor health.

The first professional social worker to be hired in the United States was Garnet Pelton, in 1905 at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Pelton retired after six months due to contracting tuberculosis in the course of her work. She was replaced by Ida Cannon who worked in the role for a further forty years. Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot was a key advocate in the creation of the role, as he believed there to be a link between tuberculosis and social conditions. Both Pelton and Cannon had trained as nurses before taking up the role. Cabot was in charge of the outpatient ward of the hospital, and together with the newly created social workers, they redefined the way in which health and wellbeing was managed. The economic, social, family and psychological conditions that underpinned many of the conditions that patients presented with were recognised for the first time. Social workers would work in a complementary relationship with doctors, the former concentrating on physiological health, and the latter on social health. In addition to this, he saw that social work could improve medicine by providing a critical perspective on it while working alongside it in an organisational setting.

This approach soon spread through other American hospitals, and in 1911, there were 44 social work departments in 14 different cities. Two years later, the number of social work departments had grown to 200.