Helen Harris Perlman

Self-Determination: Reality or Illusion?

This article was prepared for presentation at the Great Lakes Regional Institute of the National Association of Social Workers, held in Chicago, Illinois, on lune 23, 1965. The author is a member of the faculty of the School of Social Service Administration of the University of Chicago.

Believing and Doing: Values in Social Work Education

A value has small worth if it can not be transmuted from idea or conviction into some form, quality, or direction of behavior

In Quest of Coping

Most problem-solving goes forward, small piece by small piece, through the conscious effort to try out new or modified ways of behaving, thinking, and feeling

Are We Creating Dependency

This paper first appeared in Minnesota Welfare in June, 1951. Because of continued demands for copies of the article, and because of its timeliness in the current scene, we are glad to make it available to our readers.

The Caseworker's Use of Collateral Information

It has seemed to me that in order to clarify our theories and practices in the use of collaterals these considerations are important: Our emotions about the instrument of the social service exchange and of protectiveness of the client against that instrument need to be faced and examined for their validity. In our thinking, which will affect those feelings, we need to pierce the shell of certain concepts that have become shibboleths among us, to seek for the core of their actual meaning, and to try to establish their particular relationship to social casework practice. I refer especially to the concepts of confidentiality and self-determination, and to the concept of professional authority as a counterpart of professional responsibility. It is only as our feeling is accounted for and our operational philosophy is clarified that we are prepared to identify the useful purposes which information from collateral sources may serve for the client himself. These purposes, in the large, are the facilitation and the integration of the help that is given him. Cognizance must be taken, too, of the limitations in the use of secondary sources. Finally, since the end must preexist in the means, the ways in which collateral information is used will largely determine whether in general and in the individual case it will be of small or great value in promoting the joint purposes of agency and client.

On the Teaching of Social Policy

In addition to the individual group recorders, three General Rapporteurs had responsibility for working with a number of groups and for preparing the final reports of the discussion. Mrs. Helen H. Perlman acted as General Rapporteur for three English-speaking groups, Mr. Desmond Neill for three English-speaking groups and Dr. Gerda de Bock for the four French-speaking groups. The summaries presented by each of the General Rapporteurs are reproduced below.

Identity Problems, Role, and Casework Treatment

This paper has been adapted from one prepared for presentation at the National Conference on Social Welfare in Cleveland, May 20, 1963. The author is a member of the faculty of the School of Social Service Administration of the University of Chicago.

Goals of Social Work Education: Reviews of "The Social Work Curriculum Study"

In this number we present reviews of the several volumes of the recently published Curriculum Study sponsored by the Council on Social Work Education. Three years in the making, these thirteen volumes represent the second examination of social work education in a ten-year period. Social work educators can hardly be accused of shrinking from critical selfexamination. Whereas the Hollis-Taylor study,1 published in 1951, analyzed social work education and submitted proposals relating primarily to structure and to the educational responsibility of the profession, the current study attempts to formulate desirable goals for social work education. The Hollis-Taylor report made no searching and systematic study of the social work curriculum, but it did indicate that such a study should be made. During the early years following this report, efforts of the profession were directed toward launching the Council on Social Work Education.2 Urgent problems of accreditation required attention. Moreover, it was necessary for the Council to develop effective con-

Content in Basic Social Case Work

content is cast, the way it is made manifest and illuminated, determine its meaning. By the same token, method serves to project the essential nature of the knowledge and ideas that form a given content. Good teaching is characterized by the organic unity between content and method, but this does not necessarily come about spontaneously. It develops out of, first, a careful analysis of what it is that one is trying to teach and, then, when this has been settled upon, a consideration of what ways and means will infuse it with life.