Book Description

""Is this intervention effective?" This is a question that social workers have asked themselves since the birth of the profession and which social welfare agents have asked since the birth of our country. In our attempts at advancing the social welfare of the client and society, it is essential that we constantly evaluate the impact of our interventions. Over the years, however, the above question has yielded some surprising answers. During the Colonial era, those individuals suffering from mental illness who demonstrated a proclivity for aberrant and sometimes harmful behaviors were locked away in barns or small rooms. During the late 1800s in New York City, social welfare agents organized the orphan trains, sending poor immigrant children-many who were not orphans-out to the more "wholesome" environment of family farms in the Midwest. In the 1950s, social workers placed themselves in the role of social police by conducting midnight 'raids' (i.e. unscheduled visits at midnight) at the homes of welfare recipients to ensure that welfare mothers were not benefiting from a man's company in secret, and thus, disqualifying themselves from receiving aid. Looking upon these interventions with our present eyes, from a viewpoint firmly grounded in notions of self-determination and empowerment, our profession can easily see the moral failings of these interventions. From these examples, as a profession we are able to note that simply applying good intentions-by themselves-are not adequate to ensure effective and worthy interventions. We are also able to note that simply having an outcome measure is not enough to ensure the worthiness of an intervention, as the examples above contained easily measured outcomes"--