Self-help Agencies Research Articles

"Uphill All the Way": Reflections on the Course and Study of Welfare History: The Social Service Review Lecture

Welfare history has not generally been recognized as an identifiable field of study, in part owing to problems of documentation and method. Historians of welfare, moreover, have tended to neglect important themes: the impact of policies and programs on the lives of recipients, for example; the role of family and informal systems in providing assistance to persons in need; and the importance of self-help agencies in providing human services. Policy has been emphasized to the neglect of practice. Traditional chronologies emerging from the study of political history do not fit the experience of social welfare. In matters pertaining to social welfare, the United States has been a conservative society resistant to innovations designed to reform basic systems. Continuity and persistence of traditional perceptions and strategies has been the rule.