Mary Ellen Richmond

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Mary Ellen Richmond (1894)

Mary Ellen Richmond (born August 5, 1861 in Belleville (Illinois) , † 1928 in New York ) was an American pioneer of social work .

Life

In 1893, Richmond, actually an accountant, took over the management of the Charity Organization Society (COS) in Baltimore . The widespread Charity Organization Societies were agencies that identified need for help and mediated voluntary “friendly visitors”, often women from the middle classes. These were accompanied and trained by a few “paid agents” (employees), who were thus a preliminary form of social workers and supervisors . Richmond sought to distinguish "worthy" from "unworthy" relief cases through careful investigative work. A new understanding of poverty and the need for help emanated from Richmond . For her, poverty is no longer based on character, but Richmond makes the circumstances jointly responsible for poverty. In 1917 she published her standard work on social work, Social Diagnosis , which had a great influence on Alice Salomon and which founded social diagnostics . At the same time, she founded the Social Casework , which was initially taken up and further developed in Germany from 1950 onwards as an in- depth individual aid .

Fonts (selection)

  • Friendly visiting among the poor. A Handbook for Charity Workers , New York / London: MacMillan, 1899.
  • The good neighbor in the modern city , Philadelphia: JB Lippincott, 1908.
  • A study of nine hundred and eighty-five widows known to certain charity organization societies in 1910 , New York City: Charity Organization, Russell Sage Foundation, 1913.
  • Social Diagnosis , New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1917.
  • What is social case work? , New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1922.

literature

  • Elizabeth N. Agnew, From Charity to Social Work: Mary E. Richmond and the Shaping of an American Profession , University of Illinois Press, 2003, ISBN 0252028759
  • Rita Braches-Chyrek: Jane Addams , Mary Richmond and Alice Salomon. Professionalization and discipline development of social work . Budrich, Opladen (ua) 2013, ISBN 978-3-8474-0015-8 .
personal data
SURNAME Richmond, Mary Ellen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richmond, Mary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American director of the Charity Organization Society
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Belleville, Illinois
DATE OF DEATH 1928
Place of death new York