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the report of the Royal Commission on Population, issued in 1949. The Royal Commission
said ' In the process of social advance, until recently, the family has been overlooked
or given only a minor place in social policy', and again, 'No studied effort
has been made to adjust social arrangement to the needs of the modern family group ....
provision for family welfare still remains in a comparatively rudimentary stage'.
It may thus be that the answer to the question 'Why problem families?' is to be found
in the recollection that until recently the members of the family have been dealt with
as individuals, and the concept of the family as an indivisible unit, albeit subject within
to stresses and strains, has not been properly recognised. In the words of another Royal
Commission, the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, whose report was
published in 1956, perhaps we should start 'from the conviction that the nation's
well-being depends largely upon the quality of married life amongst its members . . .
Children are profoundly affected by the conduct of their parents and the impressions
formed in early childhood and in youth may strongly influence their attitude to the
community If these arguments are accepted, then the approach to the problem family,
and indeed to all families, should be not on the basis of the rights of the individual
alone and the fostering of the individual without regard to others, but on the development
of the individual within the family circle and of the family within the whole
social order of the nation. In this way the individual will more readily come to accept
that he has a responsibility towards others and will be encouraged to do his duty by
the community. What is needed is family case work, and not case work with the
individual in isolation.
Family case work
The concept of dealing with the family as a unit was not altogether new, but before
the introduction of the National Health Service on 5th July, 1948, the statutory division
of responsibility for individual members of the family between various authorities
prevented its effective realisation. In London, for example, the health and welfare of
schoolchildren had been the responsibility of the county council but the administration
of the maternity and child welfare and allied services had been the concern of the
28 metropolitan borough councils and the corporation of the City of London. In this
situation a unique feature of London's education service was its voluntary school
care committee organisation, and through this organisation a form of family case
work has existed within the framework of London's education and school health
service for nearly 50 years.
School care
committee
organisation
The first school care committees were started in 1907, when the Education Committee
renamed the Relief Committees, which had been formed in poor schools,
'Care Committees' and two social workers, known as children's care organisers, were
appointed to set up the committees in poor schools. The province of the committees
was to deal with all matters which affected the welfare of the child outside the school
curriculum—home conditions, medical treatment and medical after-care. In 1914, the
Council took the unprecedented step of appointing a child psychologist and care committee
workers were responsible for referring children in need of investigation fo'r
psychological examination. By this time organisers of children's care were attending
hospital out-patients' departments and school treatment centres. In 1929 an organiser of
children's care became the chief psychiatric social worker at one of London's first child
guidance clinics and more of her colleagues were to follow her into this field. The care
committee organisation, through its nucleus of paid organising staff and its army of
voluntary workers, thus played an important and ever increasing part in safeguarding
the welfare of London schoolchildren and incidentally of the welfare of the families to
which those children belonged. On the passing of the Education Act, 1944, the care
committee workers (together, where appropriate, with psychiatric social workers from
child guidance units) were given the task of undertaking home visiting to bring about
a better understanding by the parents of maladjusted children of the special educational
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