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the social benefits and social services they needed and were
entitled to; to get work if able, or if not, because of mental or
physical handicap, to keep occupied, to begin to solve long
standing personal or inter-family difficulties resulting in all
manner of troubles such as rent arrears and other debts, housing
complications, and so on. Also, families helped by social welfare
officers sometimes included members who were mentally ill,
while mental welfare officers would find themselves helping
people who had a physical handicap. So dividing cases into
"mental welfare" and "social welfare" was abandoned and
both groups of workers merged into three comprehensive teams.
This also had the advantage of enabling the social workers to
really get to know their colleagues from other agencies covering
the same area and to study the particular needs of each area. From
May 1968 onwards, therefore, each social worker only took on
new cases coming from the area covered by his team. No social
worker was required to work with any different groups of people
than before, if they did not wish to. So, for instance, if they had
dealt only with mentally ill or subnormal people formerly and
wished to continue this way, they were protected in doing this,
However, flexibility has always been encouraged in the section
and new staff have been recruited who believed in the idea of
mixed caseloads. At present, 14 of the 23 social workers who
carry cases have mixed caseloads. Many ofthese concentrate on
on one or two kinds of cases, but also take others. This allows
those with a special interest or flair to follow this, without
concentrating exclusively on people of the same age or group, or
with recurring difficulties.
It was only possible to change to effective area team working
when two separate stages had been reached. First, when sufficient
social workers were available who were willing to take on
several different kinds of cases. And secondly, when there
were sufficient experienced senior social workers to head the
teams.
Students
The section continued to take full-time students of social
work from outside courses for their practical training, but
shortage of accommodation restricted numbers to 20 including
13 on professional courses, three on pre-professional courses
one on a post-graduate course, and three on a new welfare
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