‘Start where the Client is’

Abstract

Near the end of World War II, in the winter of 1944 a young Dutch woman was writing a paper about the history of social work. The school of social work, where this woman was the director, was closed because of fuel shortage. Surrounded by books from the university library she wrote a paper that combined erudition with the practical experience of an ambitious woman who had made social work her profession. Marie Kamphuis (born in 1907) described how motives and aims, areas of specialization, practitioners, financing and methods of social work had changed through the centuries. She called the result of her historical research ‘Uit de Voorgeschiedenis’ (about the ‘prehistory’) because she was convinced that the real history of professional social work had not yet begun. Did she already know at that moment that she herself would play a key-role in the ‘real history’? Did she know that she would personally exert a determining influence on the discussions about motives and aims, areas of specialization and practitioners of social work, and that she would help to improve and renew professional methods? Whether she did or not, today historians cannot ignore the role of this grand old lady in the intriguing history of Dutch social work.