Social Work Resources: History

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide US social reformer. In 1898, along with Jane Addams she established Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago's West Side.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The most important social settlement in the United States was founded in 1889 on the west side of Chicago by Jane Addams and her college classmate Ellen Gates Starr. It was inspired by Toynbee Hall in London, where college graduates “settled” in the slums not only to help the poor but also to learn from them.

The social reformer, pacifist, and temperance campaigner Jane Addams had, as a young woman, enjoyed an enviable social position as the daughter of a wealthy state senator in Illinois . . . Chose instead to reject marriage and domesticity to seek personal fulfillment in helping the impoverished and mainly immigrant communities of Chicago’s industrial heartland, becoming founder of the Hull House settlement there.

Neighborhood welfare institution generally in an urban slum area, where trained workers endeavor to improve social conditions, particularly by providing community services and promoting neighborly cooperation. The idea was developed in mid-19th-century England.

Edith Abbott's most significant contributions to social work education came after 1920, when, with the School of Civics and Philanthropy in serious financial straits, she and Breckinridge helped to arrange its transfer to the University of Chicago. Renamed the School of Social Service Administration, it became the first graduate school of social work within a university.

Miss Breckinridge's varied activities in these years exemplify the close relation between social research, philanthropy, and reform in the Progressive period. She investigated tenement conditions as a city health inspector, prepared a report on the first ten years of Chicago's pioneering juvenile court movement, and served on the executive committee of the state Consumers' League.