Kasandra

“Social workers should not be secular priests in the church of individual repair; they should be the caretakers of the conscience of the community. They should not ask, “Does it feel good to you?” They should help communities create good.”
― Harry Specht, Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned its Mission

“RASSW published its first public position paper in February 1976 on the issue of licensure. Placing the issue in the broader context of the economic crisis, the paper addressed three questions: (1) the role of NASW; (2) whether licensing of social workers was racist; and (3) the relationship of licensure to service quality and accountability.”
― Michael Reisch, The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States

“The major function of social work is concerned with helping people perform their normal life tasks by providing information and knowledge, social support, social skills, and social opportunities; it is also concerned with helping people deal with interference and abuse from other individuals and groups, with physical and mental disabilities, and with overburdening responsibilities they have for others. Most important, social work’s objective is to strengthen the community’s capacities to solve problems through development of groups and organizations, community education, and community systems of governance and control over systems of social care. The concern of psychotherapy is with helping people to deal with feelings, perceptions, and emotions that prevent them from performing their normal life tasks because of impairment or insufficient development of emotional and cognitive functions that are intimately related to the self. Social workers help people make use of and develop community and social resources to build connections with others and reduce alienation and isolation; psychotherapists help people to alter, reconstruct, and improve the self.”
― Harry Specht, Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned its Mission

“Social workers must be educated on the major political and economic issues to fight effectively for clients’ needs. Major social welfare issues and programs must be examined from a class point of view. Human services are a right, not a privilege. Social welfare needs should be a government priority, not military spending or corporate profits. Social action, in concert with others, is necessary to bring about basic changes. Racism, sexism, and other divisive tools must be exposed and eliminated (RASSW, 1974).”
― Michael Reisch, The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States