One Hundred Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in English Canada, 1900–2000 (review)

Few occupations have been as dramatically shaped by the rise and restructuring of the welfare state as social work. Although a significant Canadian historical literature has developed over the past three decades exploring social workers’ role in the development of settlement houses, charities, public health, child welfare policies, immigrant services, and social assistance, this book provides us with the first comprehensive history of the profession itself, concentrating specifically on the tension between its search for recognition as a self-governing profession and its commitment to the pursuit of social justice. As the authors, both faculty members in Carleton University’s School of Social Work, argue persuasively, over the past century the profession’s quest for enhanced status has consistently come at the expense of social activism, which might harm its deepening relationship with the state, its central partner and principal employer.

The authors draw upon an impressive range of archival records pertaining to social work in the national archives as well as in provincial and university archives across the country, with the notable exception of French language materials in Quebec. This is explicitly a history of the profession in English Canada, although ironically a significant event in its narrative is the withdrawal of the Ordre professionnel des travailleurs sociaux du Québec from the profession’s national organization, the Canadian Association of Social Workers in 2004. As the authors note, ‘the departure was not unexpected. Over the years the Ordre had expressed the difficulties it faced as a member of an association that primarily represents English-speaking social workers’ (293).

The central theme of the book, which focuses principally on the activities and role of the Canadian Association of Social Workers (casw), is the inherently ‘conservativizing’ effect of the drive for professionalization. The opposition of doctors to the development of medicare is by now a well-told story in the historiography of the Canadian welfare state. The reluctance of social workers to push harder for policies that widened the scope of social justice is less familiar. Yet time and again, Jennissen and Lundy argue, the casw and its provincial affiliates displayed timidity rather than assertiveness in challenging government policies and practices as well as economic and social structures that marginalized the jobless, Indigenous peoples, women, and minorities. Throughout the Great Depression ‘social workers in Canada . . . were generally absent from organized social action and maintained a focus on casework and the individual and on professionalism’ (59). During the ‘golden years’ of welfare state expansion in the 1940s, when governments sought the ear of the profession for policy advice and generously funded the expansion of schools for professional accreditation in universities across the country, the casw embraced a ‘comfortable . . . and co-operative relationship with the Canadian state’ and ‘tended to work within the parameters established by the government’ (74). At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, it failed to come to the defence of members blacklisted as radicals for their ties with the peace movement or left-wing organizations. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the determination of the casw to ‘work closely with governments . . . with the objective of promoting itself as a professional body’ ensured that its ‘capacity as a group to present more critical strategies and options for advancing social welfare was seriously compromised’ (246). The most egregious example was its failure to provide a brief to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada and its silence around the rcsw’s final report. Given that the majority of social workers were women, ‘this was a very serious oversight and a lost opportunity’ Jennissen and Lundy argue (251). Male domination of the lucrative teaching and administrative positions within the profession made this omission even more telling.

During the past three decades of welfare state retrenchment, social workers have seen their occupational identities challenged as never before. Federal, provincial...