CHAPTER 3 3. THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL WORK The Development of a Profession T he systematic giving of charity to the poor coincides, more or less, with the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution and, in particular, with the consolidation of the wage-labour system. The immediate antecedents of Anglo-Canadian social work can be found in such socioeconomic changes in Britain and the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Broadly speaking, relief in the nineteenth century was based on the poorhouse or workhouse. In the twentieth century, it shifted to the provision of food and other necessities to people in need in their own homes, and later to the provision of cash. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, the state came to play an increasingly important role. Following World War II, Canada's economic surplus grew, as did the expectation that the state would ensure the economic and social security of its citizens. As state provision of social welfare expanded, so did the social work profession itself.

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The article presents the results of an empirical study conducted by the authors according to the method of an online questionnaire survey (N=157) in 2020. The respondents are Russian social workers. The study is aimed at identifying the specifics of the use of digital technologies in the professional activities of social workers and managers in the social sphere. The authors raise the question of what is the real goal of introducing digital technologies: to provide assistance to service recipients or to solve organizational problems. The article analyses the effectiveness of the use of digital tools and highlights the problems in this activity. The authors also try to identify ways of solving these problems for the possible increase of the efficiency of digitalization in social work. The analysis of the respondents’ opinions has shown that among the main advantages are the increase in the efficiency of a labour organization (acceleration of data processing, automation of document management, online purchases and delivery) and obtaining the necessary information, including from other departments. The main disadvantages are technical problems: failures leading to duplicate information and software imperfections.

The article has been devoted to the study of forms, methods, and levels of use of information and communication technologies in the practice of social services. The relevance of the study has been justified by a comparative analysis of data on the implementation of information and communication technologies in different countries. The authors conduct their empirical research (the method is a questionnaire survey, N = 157) and identify problems with the use of digital technologies based on the opinions of employees and managers of social service organizations. The analysis of these problems allows drawing a conclusion about the differences in the use of information and communication technologies at three levelsmacro, meso, and micro. The authors call the reasons for the contradictions factors of an objective and subjective nature. The position of the head of the organization in terms of the use of information and communication technologies and scientific approaches in the quality management system, which directly affects the efficiency of the institution, is of particular importance.

The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the problems that determine the transference to the social work platform 2.0 due to such a global challenge as the COVID-19 coronavirus infection pandemic. The model transformation of the social work in the context of the global life cycle makes adjustments to the large-scale social functioning of a person, changing the value strategies of mass pathogenic behavior. The retrospective approach was carried out in order to characterize the changes paradigms of assistance in their unity and dynamics, contradictions and dynamic possibilities, to substantiate the relevance of the new development of social work. The reasons and clinical features of the transition to the social work platform 2.0 are outlined in the context of transitive processes (uncertainty, variability, multiple diversity), that are exacerbated by the