Pat Starkey. Families and Social Workers: The Work of Family Service Units 1940-1985. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000. vi + 288 pp. $54.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-85323-666-5.

Reviewed by John Stewart (Department of History, Oxford Brookes University, U.K)
Published on H-Albion (September, 2001)

Older accounts of the history of social welfare in modern Britain tended to emphasise the steady growth of the state and its agencies, culminating in the creation of the 'welfare state' in the aftermath of World War II. This Whiggish version of welfare history, often consciously or otherwise with a social democratic or 'progressive' agenda, sought to validate the welfare state and its institutions and see their achievement as the realisation of some form of social citizenship. Such accounts were always problematic, but a more critical historiography combined with increasingly evident faults in the delivery of welfare services themselves has rendered them virtually untenable. For one thing, it is now clear that the part played by voluntary organisations in the delivery of welfare did not somehow simply disappear from around 1948 to be replaced by the state. On the contrary, such bodies have continued to play an important, if often fraught and ambivalent,role in the British social services. This is true, albeit in different ways, of long-established organisations such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, founded in the late nineteenth century; more recent bodies such as Shelter, created during yet another 'rediscovery of poverty' in the 1960s; or the organisation whose history is under discussion here, the Family Service Units (FSU) whose official founding came in that defining year of the 'welfare state', 1948.

Family Service Units grew from the wartime Pacifist Service Units and their particular contribution to social work, as Pat Starkey demonstrates in her meticulously researched account, was intensive case-work with 'problem families'. While highly labour intensive, and demanding an extraordinary level of commitment by FSU workers, this method had the apparent advantage of giving such families unprecedented levels of support and, thereby, of generally keeping the family unit intact. In, at least, the first few decades of the 'welfare state' this was very much in tune with prevailing social work philosophy which emphasised the integrity of the family and the need for children to be brought up wherever possible in such an environment.This was, for example, the thinking behind the important 1948 Children Act. The part played by the FSU in this form of social work was recognised by their being invited by statutory authorities to take on particularly troublesome or demanding cases not least, of course, because success would forestall the need to institutionalise family members, thus saving local authority money. The organisation, by common agreement, exercised an influence in this field far beyond its relatively small size. But, as Starkey shows, the history of the Family Service Units was not untroubled. While intensive case-work, for instance, was in its own way a dynamic response to particular types of problem, it could also be seen as rather conservative in its emphasis on the individual (often the mother) rather than on the socio-economic environment in which the family had to operate. And the very fact that it was, in at least some respects, initially so successful led to its adoption by other social work agencies, thereby in time posing the question of what the particular contribution of the FSU was. Moreover, as an organisation the Family Service Units came to be divided over the role of the individual units, strongly rooted in their own localities, and the centre, located in London; between each other in terms of, for example, what was seen to be the 'proper' relationship between units and their respective statutory agencies; and within units themselves as younger, professionally trained workers came to challenge the ideas of the veterans of the 1940s and early 1950s.

In uncovering this complex history Starkey has extensively, and by and large fruitfully, mined the archives of the FSU held at the University of Liverpool as well as showing an admirable grasp of social work literature and history. That history is, however, problematic and still much under-explored by academic commentators, particularly when compared with areas such as health and education. One consequence of this is that the author in places spends considerable time and space outlining broader trends in the development of social work and this, on occasions, leads to the more specific history of the FSU becoming somewhat obscured. On the other hand such was the complexity of the FSU and its structures that Starkey occasionally allows the minutiae of its business to cloud the broader picture. These minor criticisms notwithstanding, the author is to be commended in illuminating the history of a social work organisation whose work and influence was out of all proportion to its size. In so doing Starkey has begun to disinter the largely hidden history of the personal social services in the post-war 'welfare state'.

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Citation: John Stewart. Review of Starkey, Pat, Families and Social Workers: The Work of Family Service Units 1940-1985. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. September, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5463

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