Friendly Visiting among the Poor: A Handbook for Charity Workers

One of the founders of modern social work has adequately described the helpers and the helped. This work still has much to offer experienced social workers.

Wow. I came across this on the kindle freebies section and noticed that it was written on a subject close t my heart as a social worker myself. There were many points during my reading of this book where I was blown away by the raw honesty of the text and the writers ability to encapsulate some of the nuances of social work. What I love most about this book, and what I believe separates it from many modern day social work texts, is its neutrality in the sense of its politic. Despite being written a century ago, many of the lessons are very applicable to modern day social work, although it did make me smile when I read that friendly visitors should restrict themselves to caseloads of four households- wouldn’t that be nice! This should be on every SW’s reading list.