LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Foster-Homes
Stn„—The solution advocated by Mrs. MacKaill and by "Social Worker" would certainly provide an immediate increase in the number of social workers available in this, and other, community-care organisations, but it would hardly be conducive to the general improvement in the status, recruitment and training of new social workers, which alone can be the sound long-term policy.
Major improvements in the training of social workers have taken place in this country in the post-war years, though a study of the methods and training programme of some American schools of social science would give us little grounds for complacency in this respect even now. But, at least, we are beginning to accept that social work is not merely the inquisitive acquisition of personal information from the client, or the provision for his material aid, but an active experience in human relationship, demanding not only a warm and stable personality in the worker, but also training in the skills of case-work and a technical under- standing of the functions and causes of such a relationship. The younger social worker, trained in such methods, can give most valuable service alongside her older colleague, but only if she is selected carefully for her training and given more encouragement over professional status and financial reward than is the present rule in many fields of social work.
It is in the selection of suitable candidates for training that the most urgent advances are necessary. Social and emotional maturity are an essential requirement for any worker in this field, but we shall make little progress in selection if we regard such maturity as automatically commensurate with age or marital status.—Yours, &c.,
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