Social work in 1970 was practised in many settings. In the public sector there were social welfare officers, mental welfare officers and child care officers, based, respectively, in local authority welfare, health and children's departments. Education departments employed social workers in child guidance clinics, and also education welfare officers and youth and community workers. The National Health Service (NHS) employed social workers in its hospitals. Probation officers serving the courts were also social workers. The Church of England had moral welfare workers, and many social workers worked for a large number of voluntary organisations of various kinds. ‘Independent’ social workers were virtually unknown. Others worked in central government inspectorates, or as social work teachers in universities and colleges, their courses, or specialist options within courses, being validated by two central government councils, by one statutory council and by two of the many different associations of social workers.

Two events in 1970 brought significant changes. The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) was established on 24 April and the Local Authority Social Services Act became law on 29 May. This Act, which implemented some of the recommendations of the Seebohm Report (Seebohm, 1968), required counties, county boroughs and London boroughs in England and Wales to establish Social Services Committees, to appoint Directors of Social Services and, in effect, to set up social services departments. It also established the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW). These two dates, 24 April and 29 May, may be misleading. BASW had in effect been operating for some time before its official inauguration, but the part of the 1970 Act applying to local authorities came into force only on 1 April 1971, and CCETSW was not set up until 1 October 1971. The two events may appear now, and indeed seemed then, to form part of the same unifying process, but they sprang from different concerns and the effects on BASW and, indeed, on social workers themselves of the setting up of social services departments were not what they had expected. This chapter considers the origins of the two events and examines that relationship.