1. Mary Ellen Richmond was an American social work pioneer.
30 Facts About Mary Richmond
1. 2.
Mary Richmond is regarded as the mother of professional social work along with Jane Addams.
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Mary Richmond founded social case work, the first method of social work and was herself a Caseworker.
4.
Mary Richmond was born on August 5,1861, in Belleville, Illinois.
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Mary Richmond's parents died when Mary was 3, along with all three of her siblings due to Tuberculosis, which forced her to live with her grandmother and aunts in Baltimore, Maryland.
6.
Mary Richmond was the second oldest daughter of Henry Richmond, a carriage blacksmith, and Lavinia Harris Richmond, the daughter of a prominent Baltimore, Maryland, jeweler and real estate broker.
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Mary Richmond's grandmother was an active women's suffragist who was well known for being a spiritualist and a radical.
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Mary Richmond grew up being constantly surrounded by discussions of suffrage, political and social beliefs, and spiritualism.
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Mary Richmond's grandmother taught the important topics of inequality, suffrage, racial problems, spiritualism, and a variety of liberal, social, and political beliefs.
10.
Mary Richmond was home schooled until the age of eleven, and then entered a public school.
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Mary Richmond had to be home schooled because her grandmother didn't believe in the traditional education system.
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Mary Richmond graduated in 1878 from Baltimore Eastern Female High School, at the age of sixteen.
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Mary Richmond then went to live with one of her aunts in New York City.
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Mary Richmond was active in social work until her death in September 1928.
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Mary Richmond increased the public's awareness of the Charity Organization Society and the philanthropic opportunities to support social work.
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Mary Richmond was trained to be a "friendly visitor," which was the initial term for a caseworker.
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Mary Richmond visited the homes of people in need and tried to help them improve their life situation.
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Mary Richmond began to develop many ideas of how casework could best be conducted to help those in need.
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Mary Richmond remained in this position for nine years, in that time she advocated for legislation reform concerning compulsory education, child labor, and spousal desertion and nonsupport.
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Mary Richmond believed a firm cooperation between social workers, educators and the health care system was crucial to successfully helping those in need.
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Mary Richmond's career took off from charity organization leadership in Baltimore and Philadelphia to an executive position with the prestigious Russell Sage Foundation in New York City.
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Mary Richmond believed social welfare was a civic responsibility and many of her theories on social work were adopted for use in Asia, South America and Europe.
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Some most notable contributions Mary Richmond gave was that she fought to obtain legislation for deserted wives and founded the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee, the Public Charities Associated, the juvenile court, and the Housing Association.
24.
Mary Richmond identified six sources of power that are available to clients and their social workers: sources within the household, in the person of the client, in the neighborhood and wider social networks, in civil agencies, in private and public agencies.
25.
Mary Richmond never married or had any children, and died in New York City in 1928 due to cancer.
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Mary Richmond believed in the relationship between people and their social environment as the major factor of their life situation or status.
27.
Mary Richmond's ideas were based on social theory and that social problems for a family or individual should be looked at by first looking at the individual or family, then including their closest social ties such as families, schools, churches, jobs, etc.
28.
Mary Richmond focused on the strengths of the person rather than blaming them for the bad.
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Mary Richmond's focus was mostly on children, medical social work, and families.
30.
Mary Richmond had an influence in the history of social welfare from her research and study Nine Hundred Eighty-five Widows, which looked at families, their work situations, the financial resources of widows and how widows were treated by social welfare systems.