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There can be no question that family case workers are in an exceptional position to make valuable observations on family life at first hand where they are protected, as they should be, from too large a case-load, and where they have had the kind of theoretical training in social science and practical training in social work which supplies them with the necessary background.‘The interplay,’says Professor Park,‘of the attractions, tensions, and accommodations of personalities in the intimate bonds of family life have up to the present found no concrete description or adequate analysis in sociological inquiry.’(Richmond, 1922: 227–8)

There is an irony in our resurrection of the social in social work. Mary Richmond, an early 20th-century social work pioneer, had in mind that social workers could make important contributions to social science. It is noteworthy that she quotes the sociologist Robert Park to argue that social …