Emeritus Professor Lawrence is a social worker, social work educator, social policy scholar, historian and ethicist. He was a pioneer social policy scholar and Australia’s first professor of social work. His developmental professional responsibilities in social policy and social work education have been wide-ranging in both Australia and internationally. He has now completed an extensive autobiography, Seeking Social Good: A Life Worth Living, which provides an invaluable historical and personal record of social work and social welfare in the second half of the 20th century.
Robert John Lawrence AM, BA (Hons) Dip Soc Sci Adel, MA Oxf., PhD ANU
About the books
Volume 1: Getting Educated
The foundation of the author’s learning and social and cultural awareness came during his early years – from his birth in a country town in South Australia in 1931 at the height of the depression, to 1956 a decade after the end of the Second World War. Originally from Victoria, his parents settled in Adelaide in 1935 where their three children were educated at a state primary school and private secondary schools, and the University of Adelaide. At university he combined an honours degree in history and political science with a professional diploma in social work, a rare choice at the time for a male straight from school. As 1953 South Australian Rhodes Scholar, he read PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) at Magdalen College in Oxford. His fiancée Patricia Berry accompanied him overseas, sharing Rhodes House activities and holiday touring experiences in Europe, England and Scotland, while living in Oxford.
ISBN 9780995394803, Paperback, 370 pages, $60.00
Volume 2: A Career Under Way
After the extended university education in Adelaide and Oxford, came the early years of the author’s professional career. Returned from Oxford to Adelaide in 1956, he and Patricia Berry married. Their three children were born in 1958, 1960 and 1961. John worked in the social work field, briefly in a family welfare agency and then in the Social Work Section of the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. Rapid national experience came as organising secretary of a conference of the Australian Association of Social Workers. A PhD scholarship at the embryonic Australian National University in 1958 enabled him to research the history of professional social work in Australia. In 1961, he was appointed to Australia’s first academic appointment in social policy (social administration) at the University of Sydney. A sabbatical year in 1967 at the University of Michigan in the USA, was memorable for all of the family. It was the time of the race riots, the Vietnam War, the ‘war on poverty’, and student protests. A summer tour included Expo ’67 in Montreal. After 12 professionally productive years, living in Adelaide, Canberra, and Sydney, the University of New South Wales appointed him in 1968 to the first chair of social work in the country.
ISBN 9780995384810 , Paperback, 396 pages, $60.00
Volume 3: Working in Australia
The author’s main professional activities within Australia are covered after taking up the chair of social work in late 1968. In the initial period to the mid-1970s, social institutions were being challenged to justify their existence. It was a turbulent time – especially for those heading university schools and professional bodies avowing social concerns. Cutbacks, pessimism and disillusion followed the frenetic Whitlam years. In addition to developing a social work school in this environment, the author was engaged professionally in a variety of community activities, such as the Australian Council of Social Service, the Benevolent Society of New South Wales (whose name he unsuccessfully tried to change), the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Australian Council of Rehabilitation of Disabled, the International Year of the Child, and Australia’s first child abuse inquiry in 1982. Key papers reflect the author’s thinking and work on professions, on social work and social welfare generally and in particular fields.
ISBN 9780995394827, Paperback, 534 pages, $70.00
​
Volume 4: Living and Working Overseas
Periodically living and working overseas has been an important part of an Australian academic’s life. The special significance of the sabbatical year at the University of Michigan in 1967 was described in the ‘Career Under Way’ volume (Vol 2). In mid-1974, a family camping trip in Europe preceded living on York University campus for six months. Both in 1983 and again in 1987/88, a year was spent in the USA by the author and his wife adding to their Michigan year. 1983 was divided between Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A prestigious appointment 1987/88 at Hunter College in New York proved richly rewarding professionally and personally. In the first half of 1990, the author helped to develop a social work doctoral program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada and then taught a professional ethics course on a teaching exchange at the University of Stockholm. Drawing on carefully kept records, the author describes each of these periods living in different social, cultural and academic environments.
​
ISBN 9780995394834, Paperback, 296 pages, $50.00
Volume 5: Working with International Organisations
In pursuit of social good, the author worked with international social welfare and social work bodies – additional to periods of living and working overseas covered in the previous volume. Chairing the Pre-Conference Working Party in Manila in 1970 for the international social welfare body proved a catalyst for his international work. The present volume provides an account of his subsequent work with the International Council on Social Welfare and the International Association of Schools of Social Work, the global social welfare and social work education bodies, and with more specialised bodies like Rehabilitation International, ECAFE/UNICEF, the Social Welfare Development Centre for Asia and the Pacific, and the International Federation on the Ageing. A career highlight was the first Eileen Younghusband Memorial Lecture in 1984, arguing for an urgent need for a reflective universal morality.
​
ISBN 9780995394841, Paperback, 442 pages, $70.00
Volume 6: Disengaging from Work and Later Life
Australian retirement occasions, and inclusion as 1 of 15 in Faithful Angels: Portraits of International Social Work Notables (NASW Press) provide overviews and appreciations of the author’s wide-ranging career in pursuit of social good. The extensive, diverse content of the autobiography is easily accessed by an index in each volume and a cumulative index in this final volume. An emeritus professor from 1991, the author’s professional work commitments extended into the 1990s – particularly chairing the Management Board of the national Social Policy Research Centre, and completing his general book on ethics and professional conduct. His life was enriched by a growing, geographically dispersed family, and the development of Patricia Lawrence’s career as a sculptor. Six overseas trips, to the USA and Europe, kept alive their international friendships and interests. These trips are told through photos.
​
ISBN 9780995394858, Paperback, 296 pages, $50.00
ORDERING INFORMATION
You can directly download Seeking Social Good: A Life Worth Living using the links above. If you would like to buy a print edition, please request at your local bookshop or purchase a copy from your preferred online bookseller. We suggest Amazon, The Book Depository, Booktopia, QBD, and Readings. The books are printed and distributed by Ingram Spark/Lightning Source.
​