What was the initial investment into the profession of social work?
Social work has a rich history providing lessons and a foundation for the current efforts. From the programs to address the difficult consequences of the Depression in the 1930’s to the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty in the 1960’s, significant investments were made in the social work profession. The profession was recognized as necessary to solve the seemingly intractable social and economic issues of the times and federal agencies historically made substantial commitments to educate and train social workers. In recent decades such support has been limited, and now across many fields of practice there is a workforce crisis.