An experimental evaluation of school social work

The main results of the Central Lancashire Family and Community Project are reported. The project extended from 1965 to 1973 and attempted to determine experimentally the value of social work undertaken in secondary schools. Significant reductions in juvenile maladjustment and misbehaviour, both short- and long-term, were achieved. While children sent to court showed some behavioural improvement, this was accompanied by a deterioration in measures of adjustment; whereas treatment of a matched sample by school social workers was associated with sustained improvement both in behaviour and in test measures of social adjustment. The school setting was shown to have impeded the workers in a variety of ways: teachers' judgements of what were suitable cases to refer were biassed towards certain kinds of behaviour, and the teachers expected the social workers to achieve unrealistically rapid behavioural improvement. There was also pressure upon the workers to over-identify with the school, its ethos and its staff, and to become too generously involved in school activities, which interfered with their relationships with the children and the time available for social work — especially home visiting. These handicaps, however, were more than offset by the advantages of the school setting in aiding the identification of needy cases at an early stage in the development of their problems, and in undertaking sustained, beneficial casework Furthermore, there were indications that the presence of the worker in itself tended to change the ethos of the school.