The American social services system was created at the turn of the last
century “out of a simultaneous sense of loss, crisis, and optimism”
(Halpern, 1999, p. 3). According to Halpern (1999), the sense of loss was
based on longing for the security of family and community life experienced
by previous generations when there were strong “informal support
systems, clear moral codes, and procedures for enforcing those codes” (p.
3). While this may have reflected an idealized view of pre-industrial
society, the very real crises of industrialization and urbanization which
brought large numbers of European immigrants and dislocated American
farmers to try city life did create socioeconomic shifts that put families,
particularly poor families, in harm’s way. The sense of optimism came
from belief in the knowledge to be gained from the emerging social
sciences and hope that the new disciplines of sociology, psychology, and
social work would develop effective institutions that would help even the
poorest families make their way in a challenging modern world.