“The Importance of the Trained Approach”: Social Work Education in South Australia 1935–1946

Abstract

South Australia became the third Australian state in which training for social work was established following a public meeting in Adelaide in September 1935 which set up a Board of Social Service Training. This paper traces the history of that social work course through its establishment and early years. The account is based on both documentary material and on information gathered through interviews with a high proportion of the graduates of the first decade. The rationale and support for the course are discussed, as are its content both academic and practical, its difficulties through these early years and its efforts – finally successful in 1942 – to be taken within the University of Adelaide. The students of the course during this period are discussed in terms of their characteristics, their reasons for undertaking the course, and their responses to it. Their subsequent employment and welfare activities will be the focus of a subsequent paper. It is suggested that although in many respects the Adelaide course was similar to those established during the preceding decade in Melbourne and Sydney, which in turn had built on patterns of social work education developed earlier in England and the United States, its particular emphases and values reflected the role and influence of its founding director Mrs. Amy Wheaton.