44 / Social Work in Canada
Charlotte Whitton was one
of Canada’s most influential
voices on social welfare
matters. She became the
first female mayor of a major
Canadian city (Ottawa) in
1951.
Chapter 3—The History of Social Work / 45
Psychology and Social Work
Social Gospel, Social Work, and Social Action
The theories of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, played an
increasingly important role in social work in the 1920s, in tandem with
Richmond’s text, Social Diagnosis. While the latter provided guidance on
procedure, Freud provided insight into the inner workings of the individual. Social work shifted from a concern with the societal context to a
concern with a person’s psychological make-up as the source of problems.
Goldstein’s comments on American trends apply since the American
influence was still very strong in Canada: “Freudian theory overshadowed
all other approaches to social problems and orientations about behaviour.
By the mid-1920s casework teaching staffs at universities taught psychoanalytic principles as a basis for casework practice” (Goldstein 1973, 31).
Ideas based on Freudian thought (see page 67) led to a change in
social work, in a sense, supporting a move from a more active to a more
passive role for the worker. This was designed to permit social work clients
to express themselves. Casework remained the dominant form of social
work practice, but social workers began to specialize in such areas as
family welfare, hospitals, and psychiatry.
In the 1930s, what became known as functional social work, in which
the casework relationship itself would aid the client, began to emerge. Also
during this time, group work and community work emerged as different
forms of social work (Goldstein 1973, 31–38).
During this period of social reform, the social gospel movement had
a particular influence on Canadian social work. Movements for a more
socially oriented church, which would apply Christian ethics to social
problems, began to appear within the major Protestant churches in the
latter part of the nineteenth century. Within each of the Methodist,
Presbyterian, Anglican, and Congregationalist churches, there were
movements for a more socially oriented message, or social gospel,
concerning justice and social action. The social gospel wings of the
churches eventually started many of the settlement houses in Canada. The
movement also had strong roots in the prairies.
In 1907, these main Protestant churches established the Moral and
Social Reform League. This was the first organization in the country to
advocate for social reform. The League was the forerunner of the Social
Service Council of Canada, founded in 1914, with the Rev. J.G. Shearer
serving as its first director. The Council remained the main social service
advocacy organization in Canada for the next 20 years. The name change
indicated the shift from a religious and moral perspective to a more
scientific one. Not carried out casually, this move was indicative of larger
changes in Canadian society, promoting a reform movement that sought
to distance itself from a moral base. Several leading members of Canada’s
trade union movement were active in the Council. After 1925, the
Social Service Council declined in significance and was replaced by the
Canadian Association of Social Workers in 1927.
J.S. Woodsworth (1874–1942) applied social gospel ideas to his work in
social services and later to his political life. Woodsworth was a Methodist
minister, born in Ontario and raised in Manitoba, who became interested
in social welfare work while studying at Oxford University. Woodsworth
returned to Canada, taking a position as minister in Winnipeg, and began
working with the city’s poor immigrants. He helped develop the work
of social workers there, which then spread to other parts of Canada. For
example, as part of the settlement house movement he created the All
People’s Mission, which provided a variety of direct social services. He
campaigned for compulsory education, juvenile courts, and the construction of playgrounds. Woodsworth also served as secretary of the Social
Welfare League. Social gospel reformers such as Woodsworth were greatly
influenced by the labour movement, particularly by ideas concerning
worker control of enterprises and workers’ direct participation in
decision-making.
In the churches, this spirit manifested itself as the social gospel,
implying the achievement of justice in this world rather than in the next.
For these reformers, service to other human beings was considered a
form of service to God. Many Canadian historians, such as Ramsey Cook
(1985), view social work as the secular replacement of the social gospel
movement.
A
S
CHARLOTTE WHITTON AND THE CANADIAN COUNCIL ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The story of the founding of the Canadian Council on Child
Welfare, which became the Canadian Welfare Council and
is currently the Canadian Council on Social Development, is
told in the work of Rooke and Schnell (1983).
A group of social reformers who met at the end of World War
I encouraged the founding of a children’s bureau in Canada,
based on the American model. What resulted was a child
welfare bureau in the federal Department of Health, and the
founding of a private organization of which Charlotte Whitton
became secretary.
Whitton did this work until the late 1920s while she
supported herself by working for a Conservative Member
of Parliament. She then became a full-time staff member
supported by memberships and funds from contracts.
As secretary, she initiated the social survey as a method of
modernizing and professionalizing the provision of charity,
a task she saw as her mission. She believed that the use
of scientific methods had to replace the dated methods of
charity visiting.
E
L
P
M
At the same time, Whitton disagreed strongly with the
new breed of social worker/reformer as espoused by Harry
Cassidy and Leonard Marsh. She believed in containing and
not expanding the role of the welfare state. In The Dawn of
Ampler Life, a book she wrote at the behest of the leader of
the Conservative Party for whom she worked, she explained
how charity was a sensitive task requiring the involvement of
private organizations and not the involvement of the state.
Writing in 1943, she opposed the development of state
social programs in Canada, criticizing the work of Leonard
Marsh, who wrote what many consider to be the blueprint for
the welfare state in his Report on Social Security for Canada
earlier the same year (Whitton 1943, 205–221).
James Shaver Woodsworth
observed industrial
capitalism in Canada and
Britain and its failure to
meet the needs of working
people. When Woodsworth
was elected to Parliament
in the federal election of
1921 as the member for
Winnipeg North Centre, his
first resolution was one on
unemployment insurance.