Social Work Profession as a Profession and Social Welfare as an Institution, An Effort at Differentiation

Paper Prepared for Prof. Philip Coltoff, Adelphi University (currently NYU), with minor updates at CSU Circa 2018 for use with teaching History and Philsophy of Social Work and Social Welfare. I have recently been invited to submit this paper as originally written for publication, on the grounds it makes an important distinction between social work and social welfare. See the unpublished paper From Social Work to Social Justice, a copy of that paper.

One of the most important sources of confusion for new students in social work is just what the difference is between social work and social welfare.  It is easy to say that social work is a profession and social welfare is a system of services and benefits.  Social work is just one of the professions which functions within the system of social welfare.  But it is the only profession which has social welfare as its fundamental commitment.  In that sense, social welfare is more than a system.  For, indeed, social work’s commitment is not to any one system of social welfare, since all such systems are quite flawed.  Rather, social work’s commitment is the welfare of society and of human beings.  This is an effort to clarify some of that confusion. See Chart at end not yet discusse in the paper. Being currently revised for publication at the request of a journal editor who discovered it on my old UM alumni website! (10/23)