From One to Many Hope and the Lessons of Perspective

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Title

One to Many: Hope and the Lessons of Perspective

Abstract

The field of social work is necessarily suffused with hope. That there is a need for social work services has always been true, and the fact that programs and agencies have arisen to provide them is testament to the belief that conditions and individual lives can change for the better, a fundamental definition of hope. Social service agencies are institutionalized manifestations of this hope for betterment. The pioneering efforts of Jane Addams and her association with the University of Chicago (Knight, 2010) brought about the eventual integration of social work into the academy. As a discipline, social work provides academic training, research, and practical experience for those students who will eventually be part of those agencies whose mission in one way or another represents the creation and sustenance of hope for a population often in desperate need of it. From these domains-a clientele in need of hope, an agency devoted to providing it, an institution training agency personnel, and the students pursuing such training- something of a network is, or can be, established. Although all interested parties share the broad hope for a "favorable outcome," it can be seen that what that outcome may be or how to get there may differ depending on ones perspective- that is, one's place in the network that individuals and entities so desperately invested in hope have created.

Publication Date

2014

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