You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This brief monograph covers a long and active period in the development of psychiatric social work, from the days when the social treatment of childrens' problems was relieving environmental pressures, to the present when the psychiatric social worker may assume major responsibility for psychotherapy.
At the Jewish Board of Guardians the need to extend the treatment service of the agency was a major factor in the development of the social worker as therapist. With this in view, the psychiatrist assumed the responsibility for training social workers to do therapy within the limits of a program which he had established both as to types of problems to be treated and methods to be employed. In training the social worker for therapy, they believe a new type of professional worker has emerged, who, in assuming responsibility for both social and psychological treatment, can see that all aspects of the therapeutic program are 'sensitively geared to the needs of the child'.
The methods of training psychiatric social workers to treat the psychological problems of children are outlined, their value to the case worker and the agency estimated, and the function of these workers in the various departments of the agency program defined.
While the sharpening of diagnostic acumen, and the increasing of skills of the social worker through the application of psychiatric and psychoanalytic concepts to case work, has been a part of the program of many case working agencies during the past few years, the staff of the Jewish Board of Guardians has made a genuine contribution in making available, in brief form, their experience in training psychiatric social workers to be therapists, and the results they have achieved.