Social work and the welfare state in Italy

Social work developed in Italy immediately after the Second World War with an orientation towards values of democracy and solidarity and seeking to address the material and moral damage that civil society was facing. At the Tremezzo convention, which can be regarded as the founding moment of Italian social work (servizio sociale), the political foundations of social assistance were explicitly recognised (Dellavalle, 2008). Indeed, an animated debate ensued on the different interpretations proposed by representatives of the two principal tendencies present: one Catholic oriented and the other lay oriented. An historical analysis of the professional commitment of some of the first social workers reveals an interesting correlation between their involvement in the anti-fascist movement and an awareness that work in social assistance should be based on knowledge of the social causes underlying social problems.

In this context, it is interesting to note that the term used in Italy is assistente sociale (social assistant). It is a term that highlights the aspect of ‘personal’ readiness to help others and not, as suggested instead by the English term ‘social worker’, the dimension of work, the competences required, and of negotiability. It should be remembered that conditions in Italy at the end of the Second World War were marked by a considerable lack of economic and social development. Almost half of the labour force was employed in agriculture and over three quarters of the adult population had a primary school diploma only (Ginsborg, 1989). The social services were national institutions founded on a categorical basis and characterised by a high level of bureaucracy (Campanini, 2007), so that it was very difficult to introduce changes from within. Consequently, the impact of modernity, coming after the phenomena of industrialisation, urbanisation and the growth in mass education in the decades after the end of the war, was particularly strong and gave rise, at the end of the 1960s, to radical social movements that continued for over a decade. Social workers, together with other professionals, played a role in these movements and they had a marked effect on the social services.

As was the case in the US (Jansson et al, 2005) and elsewhere, the debate within the profession was between micro practice focused on the individual and organisational and reform-focused macro practice.