Child Welfare Services Under County Commissioners: A Study of the Development of the Wayne County Pennsylvania Child Care Service, 1936 to 1957
Abstract
Background of the Study. Although the protection of children from abuse and neglect has been part of child welfare programs for many years, development of better and more adequate child care methods in the United States, since colonial days has been marked by very slow but nevertheless real progress. Even before the United States had its beginning as a nation, social work was being organized in continental Europe as early as the Sixteenth Century under Juan Vives and St. Vincent de Paul, in Holland and France respectively. These men were the most influential social workers of their times and perhaps of all times. They recognized the necessity of individual case study and the vital causal relations as a means of resolving social and personal problems. They believed that programs could be developed to prevent the reoccurrence of widespread social and economic distress. Many of the early institutions in America, such as the foundling hospitals and asylums can be traced to the influence of these men. However, those who founded the American colonies were in the greater degree English, and their natural resources for providing care were the methods which they had known in England under the Elizabethan Poor Laws.
Subject Area
Public Health Education|Social work
Recommended Citation
Rickert, Paul John, "Child Welfare Services Under County Commissioners: A Study of the Development of the Wayne County Pennsylvania Child Care Service, 1936 to 1957" (1958). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30557787.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30557787
