Table Of Content9
Families and Social Workers
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6
Families and Social Workers
The Work of Family Service Units
1940–1985
Pat Starkey
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 2000 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU
Copyright © Pat Starkey 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A British Library CIP Record is available
ISBN 0–85323–656–9 hardback
ISBN 0–85323–666-6 paperback
Typeset in Plantin by Koinonia, Bury
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell and Bain Limited, Glasgow
Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow
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6
Contents
Acronyms and abbreviations vi
Introduction 1
1 Pacifist Service 8
2 Problem Families, Eugenics and FSU 45
3 The Growth of a Social Work Agency 77
4 Changes and Adjustments 98
5 Training and Professional Development 141
6 Changing Relationships with the State 174
7 Almost Not An Organisation 212
Conclusion 247
Bibliography 251
Index 269
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vi Contents
6
Acronyms and abbreviations
CCETSW Central Council for the Education and Training of
Social Workers
CCU Combined Casework Unit
CPF City Parochial Foundation
FSU Family Service Units
FWA Family Welfare Association
ICAA Invalid Children’s Aid Association
ILEA Inner London Education Authority
LCC London County Council
LPSS Liverpool Personal Service Society
MOH Medical Officer of Health
PNCMH Provisional National Council for Mental Health
PSU Pacifist Service Units
STU student training unit
ULSCA University of Liverpool Special Collections and
Archives
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Introduction 1
Introduction
It has never been one of the giants of voluntary social work.
Management consultants called in to comment on its structure in
1988 noted its relatively small size and ‘hand to mouth’ financial
existence.1 What was true at the end of the 1980s was equally true 40
years earlier, but in spite of its small size and its recent arrival in the
social work field, Family Service Units (FSU) had been more
confident of its role in the immediate post-war period than in 1988.
In the intervening years it had exercised an influence on the
development of social work practice and training which was out of all
proportion to its size and financial resources.
Its important place in the history of a developing profession could
not easily have been predicted. Originating in the activities of a small
group of conscientious objectors who attempted to respond to the
demands of wartime suffering by involving themselves in relief work,
it came to the attention of politicians and the public alike with the publi-
cation of an account of the activities of the Liverpool, Manchester
and Stepney Pacifist Service Units (PSU) during the war.2 The book
attracted both national and international publicity. The active
interest of Lord Balfour of Burleigh led the PSUs in Liverpool and
Manchester to abandon the creed which had motivated their wartime
work and to set up a more conventional voluntary social work agency,
renamed Family Service Units, in 1948. The agency consisted of no
more than a handful of young, untrained workers. Although confident
of the value of their work, and convinced of the existence of the social
phenomenon of the problem family, they were surprised to find them-
selves in receipt of invitations to establish units in towns and cities
throughout Britain. They rose to the challenge, however, and through-
out the next decade, units were set up and workers trained. FSU slowly
and steadily positioned itself within post-war welfare arrangements.
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2 Families and Social Workers
Its lack of history proved to be one of FSU’s major advantages.
Facing what were feared to be major attacks on their autonomy by
Labour government legislation in the years after the end of the war,
other agencies working with families – especially those working with
children – believed that their futures were in jeopardy. The Church
of England Waifs and Strays Society (later the Children’s Society)
feared for its future.3 So did Dr Barnardo’s.4 The passing of the
Children Act in 1948 and the appointment of local authority child-
ren’s officers reinforced that fear, but FSU did not share it. Its
members were convinced that the work they had pioneered was such
that no local authority in the late 1940s would have the resources to
undertake it. Their wartime resistance to fighting because they
believed it to be wrong, and their readiness to accept the consequen-
ces of that resistance up to and including a prison sentence, gave
them the confidence and courage to oppose what they perceived to
be the inappropriate approaches of established social work agencies.
Their relative lack of experience, their determination and, perhaps,
their naivety led them to forge ahead, without any clear idea of the
way in which the work might develop.
In the short term, their assessment of local authority capacity was
correct. The reconstruction of cities and communities severely
damaged by bombing prompted local authorities to recognise their
inability to meet the needs of a small number of poor and disadvan-
taged families. FSU was invited to work alongside other agencies, both
voluntary (for example the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)) and statutory (for example the newly
established children’s departments). However, the area of public
well-being in which officials most clearly perceived the value of an
organisation like PSU/FSU was public health. In many local auth-
orities, rural as well as urban, it was the medical officers of health
who assumed responsibility for what was seen to be a serious threat
to the work of reconstruction – the problem family. Staff in these
departments, most frequently the health visitors, undertook the care
of problem families. The relationships between PSU/FSU and
medical officers of health throw light on the extent to which PSU/
FSU’s own practices were influenced by the social theory of the pre-
war years which was characterised by an emphasis on biological
determinism. As these ideas became diluted by the environmental-
ism which increasingly influenced social theory after the war, workers
became understandably anxious to distance themselves from
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Introduction 3
eugenics; but in spite of the demonisation of eugenicism, there can
be little doubt that a group of untrained social workers during the
1940s could not avoid being influenced by elements of it. Moreover,
some of PSU/FSU’s most enthusiastic supporters were themselves
adherents of eugenicist philosophy.
The post-war years saw significant advances in the profession-
alisation of social work. This long and sometimes difficult process,
begun in the early years of the twentieth century, was documented by
Eileen Younghusband in the mid-1940s and early 1950s5 and up-
dated in the late 1970s.6 It was expressed in the introduction of new
college- and university-based courses and a new emphasis on the
value of training. FSU, by offering to take students on placement and
building relationships with key social work educators, found itself
contributing to both the theory and practice of social work. The
significance of FSU’s contribution to social work education can be
seen in the numbers of its workers who left the organisation for
academic social work, its importance as a provider of experience to
student social workers, and its contribution to discussions
surrounding developments in social work education.
Relationships between voluntary organisations and what was
perceived to be an increasingly interventionist state have led com-
mentators to try to plot the negotiating positions adopted by each
side, and to interrogate the ways in which social need, political
motivation and the self-preservation impulses of voluntary organisa-
tions have determined the extent of voluntary activity. For example,
Maria Brenton,7 Geoffrey Finlayson,8 Rodney Lowe9 and Nicholas
Deakin10 have all considered the role of the voluntary sector within
the British welfare system, as has June Rose in her study of Dr
Barnardo’s.11 Jane Lewis has discussed the changing part played by
the Charity Organisation Society/Family Welfare Association, on the
surface an agency which has more in common with FSU than child
rescue agencies.12 FSU, no less and no more sure-footed than other
agencies, found itself forced to move from a position in which it could
confidently expect financial help from local authorities to one in
which it had regularly to justify its claims for support and to demon-
strate that it gave value for money. The ability to experiment and
innovate, and to challenge local authority policy, became seriously
circumscribed in the face of an increasing emphasis on accountabi-
lity, to some extent brought about by the serious financial difficulties
in which local authorities found themselves from the 1970s onwards.
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4 Families and Social Workers
By the second half of the period covered by this book, FSU was having
to learn the painful lesson that failure to recognise the reality of its
dependent position would result in the withdrawal of essential
statutory funding and the closure of local units.
Each unit’s necessary and close relationship with its locality, part
of the original conception of FSU’s supporters in the 1940s, had an
adverse effect on its relationship with the national body; a manage-
ment consultant in the 1960s proclaimed FSU to be a fascinating
organisation, because it was so nearly not an organisation at all.13 Its
inability to delineate clear lines of management and to distinguish
between matters of national and local importance led to confused
and confusing relationships between local units and the national
office. The emphasis on the local also ensured that individual units
developed in a wide variety of different ways, and that there is no
such thing as a typical Family Service Unit. For that reason, it has
proved impossible to give a full account of every unit and to detail the
various ways in which it has attempted to serve its community. The
material presented here reflects the accident of survival as well as
those developments in post-war social work which appear to be have
been most significant to FSU and to have shaped its history. Some
units have kept little in the way of documentary material, others have
carefully saved everything; some material has been destroyed or lost;
some units preferred not to deposit their records but to shred them in
the interests of confidentiality. However, most units have deposited
some material at the University of Liverpool so that a picture of an
important and influential, though sometimes quirky, organisation
can be built up. The story peters out in 1985, which also reflects the
state of the archive; when this research was started, little post-1985
material had been deposited. More recent deposits have included
such material, although much of it has yet to be listed.
The spur to this attempt to record the history of FSU came in the
late 1980s with the discovery of boxes of documents taking up
valuable space in a cupboard in the Liverpool FSU offices. They
turned out to be the complete records, including the grocery bills, of
the Liverpool and District Pacifist Service Unit, which had operated
in the city from 1940 until the end of the Second World War. Fearful
that any one of their number might suddenly fall victim to enemy
action, the keeping of detailed and accurate records was enjoined on
every member. The result is a complete set of minutes of every
meeting held by the committee and the caseworkers, notes on every
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