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Social Work Roots and the Power of One - A Spotlight on Grace Abbott

Hailing from Grand Island, Nebraska, Grace Abbott is heralded as a true advocate for human rights. This social reformer, teacher and writer began her Social Work career in 1908 at Chicago’s Hull House. For the next nine years she was a champion of Immigrant rights. Her career then moved onto child labor rights. In 1917 she became director of the Industrial Division of the Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor. In was in this capacity that she was responsible for enforcing regulations for the first Child Labor Law passed by Congress in 1916. This passion for children’s health and safety transgressed into advocacy for women and children and Child Welfare. She was instrumental in getting the Sheppard-Towner Act passed into law, thus granting federal and state funding to women and children.

She served in various capacities under Presidents Warren Harding and Theodore Roosevelt, including Chief of the Children’s Bureau and as a council member for economic security where she helped pen the Social Security Act. She was also the President of the National Conference of Social Work in Paris, the first ever Social Work conference. In 1934 she became a public welfare professor for the University of Chicago, her graduate Alma Mater. For nearly 30 years she devoted her life to empowering and protecting others. Grace Abbot was a living example of social justice in action.

*Information gathered from Webster University at, www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gabbott.html