The ‘Younghusband Report’ Recommendation of Two-Year Training Courses and the Development of Social Work

Abstract

The Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Authority Health and Welfare Services was established in 1955 to enquire into the kind of work which social workers in the health and welfare departments of local authorities should be carrying out and, because very few were qualified, to make recommendations about their recruitment and training. This paper evaluates the influence of the Report’s recommendation for 2-year training courses on the development of social work in the United Kingdom. It places the recommendation in the historical context of the period by reviewing some of the key submissions to the Working Party, highlighting the interests and concerns of social work, medical and academic bodies; responses of those bodies to the final report are analysed. The paper argues that the discussion about social work in the final report and the introduction of training courses in 1961 for social workers in the local authority health and welfare services were significant in providing an initial basis for expanding the numbers of social workers and contributing to their wider development as a single occupational group.