Sosionomien opintomatka USA:ssa Michigan State Universityn vieraina 25.9.-7.10.11

Osa 3: Jane Addams (1860-1935), The Pioneer in the Community-Based Social Work

Pirkko Aavaluoma

Group photo from in the front of Jane Addams museum

Visiting the Hull house museum in Chicago made me puzzled: ´A bicycle has been innovated again´.   Need for community-based social work had been seen meaningful over hundreds of years ago, but conversation still continues, how important inclusive approach in social work practises is at a point of client’s welfare. And conversation continues, because human needs never change! 

Always adaptable and well-behaved social workers never have made history. Struggling for changes requires not only radical way of thinking but real deeds. Are we students as the forthcoming professionals capable to advocate our client´s issues in the every level of social-services ignoring if necessary our own position in an organization we will be working for? It is embarrassing to confess that I am a little bit unsure of myself at this point! But one straight forward woman did and made history, not only because of her radical thinking of human equality, but also of her gender: women had no political rights and established position in societies in 1800s. Her name was Jane Addams, educated and upper-classed woman, who advocated for new thinking of human rights and founded Hull House in Chicago in 1881 as a response to problems to urbanization, industrialization and immigration, which brought on poverty and inequality.   She identified the political corruption and business avarice that caused the city bureaucracy to ignore health, sanitation, and building codes. She also collected data to prove her arguments as truthful and evidence-based. She really was trying to impact on policy-makers ignoring the public opinion and her position as an upper class woman.

Dean Baba and the shirt of Jane Addams saying "wellbehaved women seldom make history"

At the present day of view the settlement was amazing cause of multicultural feature in it. It had been populated by Italians, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants in 1890`s. In 1920`s also Afro-Americans and Mexicans started taking part in activities arranged in Hull House settlement. The settlement was a place, where residents gathered together to eat, debate, learn and participate in activities so that adapting in a new country would have been easier. English, cooking, sewing, technical skills and model of American society were taught to the immigrant: men and women who had chosen to live at Hull House. They paid rent and contributed to the activities Hull House had been provided to the neighbours. These kinds of services were nursery, kindergarten, public kitchen and access to public paths and playground. Hull House was not only a settlement of human safety and support, also activities  concerning art and self expression had been regard as an important for the residents to process their new social environment and their new role in it. Teaching artists were essential to the process. They offered classes to the neighbours and their children in sculpture, painting, drawing, weaving and ceramics. The meaning of art at Hull House community was provoking the resident`s resources and binding together differences in race, ethnicity, gender and political news. Comprehension of their community was based on the resident`s pluralistic view, which had to be seen in the accessibility and participatory way of creating their common culture.

Are the communities where we are living in exclusive or inclusive? Jane Addams taught, inequality is in the structures of society, basically, in our values. And what else but values could form the basis of social work?  As a value inclusive way of thinking means that real changes can be done by responding respectfully to people of any kind, just as they are. It is ethically and also economically sensible to offer them facilities for creating and reforming an environment on their own premises.  And what was the name of bicycle that has been invented again! – Client orientation!

Further information: http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/hull_house.html