Social Work in Credo: History

From Notable American Women: 1607-1950
If Hull House helped Jane Addams overcome a sense of futility and alienation, it gave Ellen Starr the opportunity to advance the sacred cause of art . . . She sought to bring meaning into the lives of the slum dwellers by establishing reading clubs devoted to Dante, Shakespeare, and Browning, and by decorating the walls of Hull House and nearby schools with reproductions of great art.

From Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs
Next to Hull House, the Henry Street Settlement is the most significant settlement house in the United States. Visiting nurse Lillian Wald established it on New York’s Lower East Side in 1893. Besides housing a charitable nursing service, Henry Street offered social clubs, English and citizenship classes, and strong programs in the visual and performing arts.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The most important social settlement in the United States was founded in 1889 on the west side of Chicago by Jane
Addams and her college classmate Ellen Gates Starr. It was inspired by Toynbee Hall in London, where college graduates “settled” in the slums not only to help the poor but also to learn from them.

The social reformer, pacifist, and temperance campaigner Jane Addams had, as a young woman, enjoyed an enviable social position as the daughter of a wealthy state senator in Illinois . . . Chose instead to reject marriage and domesticity to seek personal fulfillment in helping the impoverished and mainly immigrant communities of Chicago’s industrial heartland, becoming founder of the Hull House settlement there.

From Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers
The humanitarian and public health activist Lillian D. Wald pioneered “public health nursing,” a phrase she coined, after setting up the first project to offer nursing in the community at her Henry Street Settlement in New York. In so doing, she inaugurated a system that became a prototype for nursing later adopted in rural areas across the United States by the Red Cross.

Neighborhood welfare institution generally in an urban slum area, where trained workers endeavor to improve social conditions, particularly by providing community services and promoting neighborly cooperation. The idea was developed in mid-19th-century England.

. . . Edith Abbott's most significant contributions to social work education came after 1920, when, with the School of Civics and Philanthropy in serious financial straits, she and Breckinridge helped to arrange its transfer to the University of Chicago. Renamed the School of Social Service Administration, it became the first graduate school of social work within a university.

From Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers
As with her older sister Edith, the impetus for Grace Abbott’s humanitarian and civic work came from her Quaker background and the example of her reformist mother and her administrator father, who was the first lieutenant governor of Nebraska.

Miss Breckinridge's varied activities in these years exemplify the close relation between social research, philanthropy, and reform in the Progressive period. She investigated tenement conditions as a city health inspector, prepared a report on the first ten years of Chicago's pioneering juvenile court movement, and served on the executive committee of the state Consumers' League.

From Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers
The outstanding British pioneer for housing reform Octavia Hill set standards for the renovation and management of dwellings for the poor that were adopted throughout the Continent and United States . . . From these reforming activities sprung up a system of social work among the poor based on Hill’s belief that they should be assisted in the recovery of their self-respect.

From Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers
In her work through the U.S. Children’s Bureau and her advocacy of separate care for the mentally ill, Julia Lathrop was one of a gifted and devoted group of women who pioneered social work from the 1890s at Hull House in Chicago. She went on to devote forty years of her life to the advancement of women’s role in government and to social reforms at the federal level.

From Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers
Alice Salomon, sometimes referred to as “the German Jane Addams,” was the outstanding pioneer of social work in Germany. As well as being active in the women’s and peace movements, in 1899 she set up the first German training establishment for social workers and was inspirational in the development of the discipline, in 1929 founding the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and serving as its president and secretary.