Brief History
With the increasing need for professionally trained social workers, the School of Social Work was established at Osu in Accra in 1946 to train social workers in certificate courses.
Graduates from the school worked in social welfare departments in the country. Prior to the establishment of this school, volunteers and teachers who had some experience working with people offered social welfare services, and training was provided outside the country.
To further upgrade professional training, a two-year Social Administration Programme was initiated in 1955 at the University of Ghana. Students from this programme graduated with a diploma in social administration.
In 1989, the Social Work Unit then under the Department of Sociology was established to upgrade training of social workers at the Bachelor’s level. The Unit at the time had only three full-time lecturers who worked tirelessly to keep the programme going in its infant years.
Twelve years later on 27th September 2001, the Social Work Unit was weaned from the Department of Sociology to become an independent department. In 2003, an MPhil programme was initiated and eight years later, in 2011, a PhD programme took off with an initial number of four students, which increased to seven later in the same year.
Culled from the Departmental Reader: Social Work in a Changing World: Issues and Prospects