Putting knowledge into action: a social work perspective on settlement house research

This chapter aims to explore the link between 'Settlement House research' and the shaping of social work as a profession in two ways. First, by providing an overview of research topics and the methodological diversity. This overview is based on a sample of individual and collective studies that can be traced back to the initiative of social settlements or national settlement associations. Second, two studies are examined in greater depth, focusing on their implications for the emerging social work profession.

Between social mission and social reform: the Settlement House Movement in Germany, 1900–30

This chapter provides an overview of the development and characteristics of the German settlement movement and traces both the currents of social reform as well as the actors to which they were linked. Using the example of the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-Ost (social working group Berlin-East) in particular, it will be shown that the social missionary approach of the German Settlement House Movement is due especially to its anchoring in the bourgeois youth movement and its strong Protestant character. Furthermore, the chapter sheds light on the area of social research in the Berlin settlement house which helped to establish further professional networks. This creates a picture of a historical variant of community work that is both independent and unique in an international context, and in which fundamental theological-ethical positions as well as certain currents of social reform, social research and social work converged in a specific way.

A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement

This chapter provides a brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement. It develops the argument that the settlements houses contributed to the transnational advancement of the nation in form of the national welfare state by interpreting and tackling the social question as a crisis of a (national) community. Against the background of two major social developments (secularisation and scientisation), it shows how settlement knowledge was translated to different social contexts and proved to be flexibel enough to transcend various social boundaries (class, knowledge etc.) and transform society

Settlement houses and the emergence of social work in Mandatory Palestine

The two settlement houses established in Mandatory Palestine were part of efforts by Jewish social workers to both address poverty among immigrant populations and to strengthen their integration into the Zionist project, which sought to establish a Jewish state in that country. The first settlement house was established in Jerusalem by a Zionist women’s organization in 1925. Drawing upon settlement house models in the UK and those developed in Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, the settlement house sought to combine community level and casework interventions, led by a social worker, in working with poor immigrant Jewish families primarily from Yemen. A decade later a second settlement house was established by social workers employed by Jewish social services. Here again a range of community and family-focused interventions were combined with efforts to integrate poor immigrant Jewish families into the wider Jewish community and to strengthen their affiliation with the Zionist values that dominated this community.

The French maisons sociales, Chicago’s Hull-House scheme and their influence in Portugal

This chapter traces the transnational translation of the settlement house model from the UK and the USA to France and from there to Portugal. The French settlement houses, maisons sociales, that emerged at the end of the 19th Century were influenced by social Catholicism and feminism. They also shared commonalities with, and exhibited divergences from the UK and US settlement house models. While residence, research and engagement in professional training were common, research in the maisons sociales was, unlike in the USA, not a means to further social policies but rather to enhance scientific knowledge. In the mid-1930s, the settlement house model was adopted in Portugal under the aegis of the single-party regime of the Estado Novo. Of the two organisations that engaged in the establishment of settlement houses in Portugal in the following decades, the Institute of Social Work in Lisbon (ISS) was strongly influenced by the French maisons sociales and by social Catholicism.