Monsignor Hudson of Coleshill worked out a neat equation which is still valid for religious engaged in social work: ‘A religious vocation’, he said, ‘is good, efficiency is also good, but the two together equal perfection’. He was one of the pioneers of the training of religious in orthopaedics. It is interesting to reflect that religious communities devoted to nursing and education have no particular difficulty in submitting their subjects for training in accordance with State regulations, and the fruits of this policy are to be seen in our nursing homes and hospitals as well as in our schools and training colleges.

In other sections of social work, whether for example for the old or for children, the need to develop a particular technique and submit to training is only now coming into prominence. We have come to realise, rather late in the day maybe, that the mere housing of people, good as an emergency measure, is only the beginning of the problem of adequate care. It has been taken for granted that anyone, particularly any religious, was adequate to meet the needs of the case. But today we are being brought to realise that something more is needed if we are to achieve effective work and that there is no contradiction between training and religious vocation. A moment’s reflection shows that religious teachers and religious nurses are none the less good religious, perhaps even better, because they are good teachers or good nurses, and similarly in all other sections of social work there need be no antagonism between professional proficiency and religious vocation.

Social work might be described as the natural human response of one human being to another who asks for help, and case-work is a (very inadequate) name for the attempt to give the individual person in trouble the individual remedy he requires. A ‘case-worker’ is the substitute for the ‘good neighbour’ of a simpler society. In a small community the good neighbour steps in during a crisis with advice and help, able to provide an objective point of view, and ready to step out again when no longer needed, without disturbing the fundamental independence of the person concerned. In a community where everyone knows each other and social ties are firmly knit, this works very well; it was not till the growth of industry and the development of large towns where rich and poor were segregated into different areas that the system broke down.

The social workers of the nineteenth century found themselves complete strangers in experience and outlook to the people they were trying to help. To be the good neighbours they desired to be—intimate, wise, accepted friends— they had to evolve a technique based on principles which would enable them to help without patronage or sentimentality. They called this technique ‘case-work’. It came into being in 1869 with the Charity Organisation Society (now the Family Welfare Association) from which all other family case-work societies have developed.

This has been called ‘the century of the child’; and with justice, because never before has there been such intense interest shown in the world of childhood. This interest, and the knowledge that has resulted from observation and study during fifty years and more, has found application in our day, which has seen the tragedy of homeless children and disturbed homes to an unparalleled degree. There have been set up, all over Europe, children’s colonies, schools, hostels of a new kind for orphan, abandoned and delinquent children. Congresses and Committees are constantly discussing these problems. Books and articles on the subject are innumerable.

In the world of education too there has been an evolution, almost a revolution, of which we are hardly aware: the almost purely intellectual or instructional idea has given way, or is giving way, to one which has more regard for the whole child—body as well as mind, the senses and the imagination as well as the cognitive faculty alone. There is far more stress on doing and making; on music, painting and drama: on things, so to speak, as well as just facts. The application of this to the teaching of religion and the escape from the tyranny of the mere catechism is something so obvious and fruitful that, to Catholics, it should hardly need saying.

Our conception of mental illness has undergone a great change during the last half-century and many old misconceptions have been discarded. Lunacy, a purely legal term, which corresponds to no medical diagnosis, has slipped into the background and mental illness is recognised as a wide range of conditions of varying seriousness about which there is a growing body of knowledge and for which, to an increasing extent, appropriate treatment can be given.

The effect of this change is striking. Early in the century the only recognised provision for mental illness was to be found in hospitals known as lunatic asylums, which were administered under the 1890 Lunacy Act. These hospitals were designed for and restricted to persons who, owing to their mental condition, were incapabe of managing their own affairs and who, for their own safety or that of others, needed to be placed under care and treatment. Treatment was legally provided for, but in practice the emphasis was on care and protection, and since admission to hospital meant the deprivation of the patient’s liberty it followed naturally that elaborate provision was made for the prevention of abuse. It followed equally naturally that relatives and friends were reluctant to invoke the Act. The result was that the only hospitals able to provide resident treatment were closed to many who would gladly have taken advantage of it, and the Lunacy Act became only too often a barrier to treatment.

During the last half-century, industry has increasingly recognised that it is actively and directly concerned with the education and training of all who look to it for a career. Many in industry today have jobs with little intrinsic value in them, done often solely for the wages alone. These men and women neither like what they do nor do what they like. Now a few are realising that no political or economic rearrangement will remove that attitude to work: we shall have to rediscover, with Eric Gill, that ‘the artist is not a special kind of man but every man is a special kind of artist’. Perhaps then we may restore to work a sense of worthwhileness and find the desire once again to make well whatever needs to be made, and the humility and confidence to do the seemingly little things superlatively well.

During the last five years, firms, industries, associations, universities, colleges and government departments have individually, or in varying forms of collaboration, made large plans for the education of those associated with industry. Thousands of education and training officers have appeared and innumerable courses and handbooks of every description prepared.