Social development and its relevance to Australian social work

This paper presents Midgley’s theory on social development to an Australian social work audience. It explores the concept and theory of social development, examines the relationship between social work and social development, and discusses its relevance to social work in Australia. It suggests that while social work and social development might share similar broad goals, their strategic approaches differ with the former cast within a professional model concerned with welfare broadly conceived and the latter directly concerned with the alleviation of poverty in the less developed parts of the world. It concludes with thoughts on the Australian face of social development and suggests changes which would need to be made if social work were to embrace social development