Some key issues facing social work during the century continue to this day. Social work is a relatively recent profession. It grew up with industrial society and the development of a factory system, a vast division of labour, private markets, the use of money, and an unequal distribution of material gains. As industrialism expanded, many people were concerned about the existence of poverty in the middle of great affluence.

Three "neglected" children who became wards of the state, 1910, National Archives Neg. no. PA118221.