The purpose of this chapter on the history of helping is to provide the background for understanding the current state of the helping behavior and the human service professions. We are in a period of rapid change, with a growing percentage of people in need due to many economic forces, and reduced funding for helping services, due to the public and political values and attitudes toward those who need help. It is important to understand the cyclical nature of these changes in order to anticipate 'what's next'.

Different  beliefs and values at different times in history have led to different attitudes about helping the disadvantaged or 'needy' poor.  Over time, attitudes have varied from  blaming conditions (opportunity theory) to blaming the victims of those conditions. These attitudes then led to changes in social policies, laws regulating and assisting the disadvantaged, and even the definition of who qualified as 'disadvantaged'. What follows is a brief outline of the history of helping in our present society.

•  In ancient Greece and Rome, charity was rare, but with the growth of the early Christian church, charity became more important because it was seen as good for the giver, a ticket to Heaven, if you will. The poor were seen as a result of God's will, just as the landed nobility and royalty were seen as chosen by God.
• Up until the 1500's, 'helping', charity, was left to the churches, families and neighbors of those who needed help.  Disabilities were seen as 'God's will', but poverty was was beginning to be seen as due to laziness  (a sin or moral deficiency), mental illness to demon possession: only the children orphaned by illness/accident,  widows of a man crushed by a run-away horse, those left needy by the hand of fate, were seen as 'worthy' of receiving assistance. Patterns of land ownership and social hierarchy had built-in social obligations but they were not reinforced by law.
• By the 1500's, society was becoming increasingly complex, with greater social unrest and less stable communities. The growing sense that  civil law and the government should address unmet human needs led to the creation of the English 'Poor Laws", in which the state assumed responsibility for the 'worthy poor': the elderly, orphans, people with disabilities. These laws also assumed the responsibility for social control, punishing vagabonds, debtors and beggars. 
• The further disruption of traditional society  by the Industrial Revolution created growing numbers of 'urban poor', but rather than blame social conditions, the poor were blamed for their 'lazy', 'dependent' and 'irresponsible' ways. Wealth was considered a virtue, earned by using one's wits and working hard.  Again, the 'worthy' poor, in dire straits through no fault of their own, deserved charity, but the 'unworthy' poor were treated with shame and humiliation, if not actually jailed for their offenses.
• In the mid-1800's, Dorothea Dix, shocked at the condition of the mentally ill who were locked away in jails under appalling conditions , advocated for reform efforts for  the poor, disabled, and especially for the mentally ill. her work led to the establishment of the first hospitals for the mentally ill.
• Thus began the social welfare movement. The Salvation Army, a religious organization that began in England, implemented numerous social welfare programs. The need for such programs was made especially pressing by a n economic depression which led to the establishing of the Charitable Organization Societies. Their philosophy that people were naturally lazy, however, led to limiting relief to  the 'worthy poor' and charity was coupled with training and increased social control of those who would not 'help themselves'.
• The huge influx of immigrants to poor (inexpensive) urban neighborhoods created terrible social conditions in the industrial cities of the Northeast. Upper class women (who had the time, money, and servants to do their cooking, cleaning, childcare and laundry, etc) worked as volunteers to establish 'settlement houses' in these neighborhoods to advocate for the poor and to provide social services and to organize neighbors to improve social conditions. These workers and organizations were the fore runners for social work as a profession and of social activism as a part of that work.
• In the early part of the 20th century, charity workers however, began to lose their grasp of the importance of social conditions in determining who was 'disadvantaged' and why: once again, the individual traits and problems were blamed. The new Freudian/psychoanalytic point of views of intrapsychic causes of behavior led to a more individualized and 'clinical' approach, with individual personal problems, rather than change of social conditions, being the focus of  remediation.
• The focus again shifted back to social conditions with the accelerating changes and social problems of the two world wars and the Great Depression. Social and labor unrest put pressure on the government to come up with relief programs and the huge numbers of hard-working people who lost their jobs due to economic conditions  led to popular support for the establishment of social welfare programs, some of which are still in effect today. Unemployment Compensation, Social Security, public welfare and health programs, and vocational rehabilitation programs came into being in 1935 and were further broadened  in the 1950's to establish governmental civil rights supports and  the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
• By the 1960's, it was clear that, despite these programs, the successes of labor organizing, and the prosperity of the preceding decade, the problems of poverty, discrimination, and extreme disparities between the social classes were not just vanishing. A growing belief in the rights of the disadvantaged to receive needed services led to a massive growth in government efforts at urban renewal, aid to education, job training, law enforcement, drug abuse treatment, mental retardation services and other programs for the disadvantaged. Grassroots pressure for social change, breakthroughs in treatment for disabilities and mental illness, and continuing economic growth all led to new approaches to providing human services and to the growth of  the human service field.
• As might be predicted by past cycles of beliefs about the causes and 'cures' for being 'disadvantaged', the recent  extended period of full-employment and economic growth led to a new period of 'social Darwinism', in which the safety net of 'welfare as we know it' was taken away. The predominant attitude of those with political influence moved toward 'anyone can get a job if they want to work', while ignoring the loss of the well-paid manufacturing jobs that allowed the worker to rise above poverty-level existence. Just recently, the first families to reach the end of their five-year lifetime limit on welfare have been dropped from the rolls. Support for good inexpensive housing has vanished, and hundreds of working poor are living from paycheck to paycheck, or are already homeless.  
• Now we are in a period of drastic economic change. We have seen a rapid enormous drop in the economy. A continued down-turn, the growing number of human tragedies being played out in our streets, and social unrest or activism may yet lead to a reversal in our current tendency to 'blame the victim' . Once again, perhaps, the general public will come to understand the structural limits to opportunity that underlie our on-going social problems. Already, the federal government is discussing extending unemployment compensation. As a nation, we never have tolerated for long huge numbers of starving people in our streets. Once again, we  may hope to see the national attitudes and values change. Until this takes place, our government cannot respond with new programs to address the problems of the disadvantaged  as the politicians risk the loss of their electoral and financial backing.

Terms and concepts to know:

• the principle of reciprocity: Most human societies have created some form of  reciprocal relationships in which people help each other in the expectation that help will be there when they themselves need it. The degree to which social institutions support or discourage mutual help varies with the values and beliefs of the society.
• Social Darwinism: is based on the belief in 'the survival of the fittest', and the fittest people were those who made money. Poor people are seen as 'unfit' individuals.
• The residual philosophy of social welfare: This theory believes that the problem that requires help is not a 'normal' social need, but rather is due to special circumstances brought about by individual deficiencies. This philosophy leads to victim-blaming: when a person is seen as poor or needy due to genetics or sinfullness or laziness, they are seen 'the problem', to be corrected or punished.
• Deserving vs undeserving poor: Those who 'blame the victim' feel superior to the 'victim', but even some of their own sometimes fall on hard times. Those who are seen as 'needy' through no fault of their own are seen as the 'deserving' poor, while those who are blamed for their condition are the 'undeserving' poor.
• The institutional philosophy of social welfareOpportunity theory: this point of view sees that it is not the victim that is to blame for his/her poverty, but rather the lack of opportunities and support in the society for getting out of poverty.
• Means-tested programs vs. universal. (STUDY and know the difference between these two.) Only people who can prove that they are poor can receive assistance from 'means-tested' programs, whereas anyone who meets certain qualifications (unemployed/disabled/old, etc) can receive assistance regardless of whether they are poor or not.  (Every working mother in France has the right to state-supported daycare, even if she is rich.)
• Entitlements: these are benefits and services that people are legally entitled to, not based on whether they are judged to be 'deserving' or 'undeserving'. (The criteria for  receiving welfare used to be whether you were poor or not poor, not whether you were working, or had been on welfare for five years, etc. Social Security is an entitlement program that  is not means-tested: people qualify by having worked at certain jobs far a minimum amount of time and have paid taxes into the system.)
• Dialectic of change: first one ideology (thesis) then generates its' opposite (antithesis) leading to the next round of ideas which integrate aspects of each (synthesis) in ongoing cycles of changing ideas.

The book illustrates the cyclical nature of helping with the examples of welfare, mental illness and juvenile justice. Read about and be able to summarize this history in a paragraph.

Social definition of behaviors as problems:

 Often the process of defining and treating individual problem behaviors as social problems is a matter of politics: Public ideology is spelled out in the laws and institutions that deal with the problem, and public beliefs are manipulated by the media.

• Alcohol abuse is a behavior that can be viewed as an individual behavior or a problem to society.  It has been made illegal (prohibition) but this did not stop drinking, it made the production and selling of alcoholic beverages a crime and all drinkers, criminal. Now it is no less harmful to society but it is again legal and alcoholism is considered an illness that needs 'treatment'. You are only a criminal if you drive while intoxicated, and the sentence is very light compared to using illegal drugs. Yet marijuana, an illegal drug, causes far less damage to individuals and society than alcohol.
• Cocaine use was once legal and accepted: 'coke' was a major ingredient of Coca-Cola. Now people who use coke are criminals, there is very limited treatment available for the addiction, and huge sums are spent by the government on  the 'War on Drugs'.
• Currently we are in an epidemic of obesity, which has social and economic costs. If we as a society were to decided that unhealthy eating habits were a 'social ill' and made fast food illegal, the price of a M'cD's burger would soar, a huge criminal 'industry' would come into being, and those who 'indulged' as well as those who produced and sold fast foods, would be seen as criminals.

Read about the history of social work with an eye to the benefits and drawbacks of human service work becoming like the social work profession, more professionalized (registered, certified, credentialed).