Early Social Work in Retrospect

Abstract

This is an important occasion I think and it gives me considerable pleasure to be taking part in it. When I came to be collecting my thoughts about what I might contribute to this seminar, I came to a vivid awareness that this half-century we are all gathered here to mark today is not just a period of time applying to medical social work in Victoria. It is one which spans my own social work career. I was not here when the Almoner Department was established in Melbourne Hospital in 1929. I did not come to Victoria till the beginning of 1932 but I was already in 1929 a social work student in the United States. It does not seem possible.