Back in 1970 social work was practised in a variety of specialised settings. These included medical and psychiatric hospitals, child guidance clinics, probation, and local authority children’s, health and welfare departments. Only a minority of social workers in the local authority services were qualified.

Social workers also worked in a variety of voluntary organisations, mostly dealing with the care of children, elderly people or individuals with disabilities. In addition, there were highly specialised agencies concerned with distressed families of which Family Service Units and the Family Welfare Association were prime examples. Work was usually in small groups that included senior workers and team leaders. In the many welfare departments controlled by Medical Officers of Health, social workers could be overwhelmed by the authority of the medical model.

If you worked in any of these environments you carried a number of ‘cases’ and were responsible for all aspects of that work: the amount of time you spent with each, how often you visited (aware of the costs of travel and so on), the specific methods you used and when to close a ‘case’. You were of course able to seek advice and support from peers or in supervision to examine the issues you might be facing with any specific situation. In some large organisations there would be team leaders and a principal who could be called upon for extra resources, or for advice on particularly complex cases. What bound all this together was the concept of professionalism, promoted and enforced where necessary by professional associations. Social workers sought leadership, a sort of taken-for-granted function combining responsibility and a degree of charisma.

In the 1960s we were a committed, hard-working and dispersed group of workers with little public recognition or authority – a weakly defined profession with porous boundaries, often set within more powerful organisations.