Selective Memory: A Note on Social Work HistoriographyDavid Burnham*
Dave Burnham currently works for Lancashire County Council in adult social care leading on
complaints, research, performance information, community engagement, management
information and the JSNA. He has in the past worked as a trainer, social work lecturer, child
care social worker and started his career as a probation officer. His historical interests include
British cultural history of the twentieth century.
*Correspondence to David Burnham. E-mail: daveburnham@virginmedia.com
Abstract
Since the Second World War, histories of social work have regularly confirmed that the
activities of philanthropic visiting societies, chiefly the Charity Organisation Society
(COS), supplied the principles and practices of late-twentieth-century social work. Similarly,
histories of social work have asserted that there was no legacy from public sector
welfare workers to the development of social work after 1948, which date marks the
start of social work in the public sector. This paper reviews these orthodox assumptions,
concluding that both are flawed. There is evidence that the reported legacy of charitable
visiting societies owes a great deal to a particular set of circumstances after the
Second World War and also that the public sector hosted social work roles and activity
from before the GreatWar. Such practices and roles in the public sector developed in the
interwar years and there was considerable continuity of staff and practice from before
the SecondWorldWar into the 1950s. This public sector legacy was ignored, then forgotten
by post-1948 historians of social work—partly by chance, partly as a deliberate policy
by some social work historians and latterly because of a lack of rigour by those reviewing
social work history.
Keywords: history, historigraphy, training
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