First published in 1962, From Charity to Social Work is the story of the evolution of social work in England and the United States from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Beginning with the origins of casework, group work, and community organisation in nineteenth-century England, it traces the process by which ideas and concepts preached and practiced in the Old World were transplanted to the New World.

There, subject to different influences and interpretations, these concepts underwent a transformation into something richer than what had existed in England. Thus transformed, these ideas and concepts were transmitted in the twentieth century back to the land of their origin, enriching the theory and practice of social work from which they had originally sprung.