Social Work History

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

American Nobel Peace Prize winner, philosopher, sociologist, and suffragette Jane Addams is known as the "mother" of social work. Her writing as well as her activism laid the foundation for many of the positive social services and theories we take for granted. In "The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements", first published in 1892, she discusses in a compelling and fair-minded way the case for settlement living, living and working amongst those who need help most. As with all other Addams’ work, the emotional is inexorably tied to the logical and factual.