Reconversion and Its Implications for the Schools of Social Work

Abstract

work. The problem not one of scarcity but rather of an embarras de richesse. Definitions range from those that would embrace the whole gamut of social and economic welfare to a rigidly narrow concept of the application of clinical skills to individual cases. Yet there seems to be a measure of agreement on at least one point: whatever else it not, social work, to use the words from the catalogue of one of the leading schools, is needed to help people solve their problems of adjustment to other persons and to the social environment. If this indeed the case, then the postwar world and particularly the reconversion period will be a social workers' heaven — vocationally speakin g— for the reconversion period will essentially be a period of adjustment. The most outstanding of these adjustments is, of course, the whole process of converting our economy from one geared to the needs of war to one functioning for the purposes of peace. This tremendous undertaking will affect the lives of literally millions of our people, for whom it will mean either occupational or geographical readjustments, and in many cases both. The economists and experts testifying before Senator George's Committee on Postwar Planning appear to have been in agreement that there will be somewhere between twelve and nineteen million job shifts in the eighteen months following the end of the war with Japan. This estimate allows for the withdrawal of many young, old, and women workers but includes the return of men from the armed forces, the disemployment and reabsorption of several millions of workers in industries