KLEIN, PHILIP

KLEIN, PHILIP (1890– ), U.S. social worker. Klein was born in Hungary and immigrated to the United States in 1902. After receiving his training in social sciences in New York City, he directed many large-scale research projects, including a national survey of unemployment (1921–22) and a social study of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1938). From 1923 to 1926 he served as the executive director of the American Association of Social Workers, and from 1927 to 1953 he was first director of research and later professor of research, New York School of Social Work. He was research director, White House Conference on Children in a Democracy (1939–40). Klein served as consultant to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in planning the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work, Versailles, France (1948–50), and on social work manpower needs in Israel (1954–56). He was a United Nations expert assigned to the Israel Ministry of Social Welfare in 1959. Later he was a consultant to the Department of Welfare of the State of Pennsylvania. During the 1930s and 1940s he led a minority group of social work educators who favored greater emphasis on the social action functions of social workers rather than the clinical or treatment emphasis. Klein proposed broad governmental social welfare programs and wrote widely on the subject.

His works include Prison Methods in New York State (1920); The Burden of Unemployment (1923); articles in the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences (1930–35); A Social Study of Pittsburgh (1938); Next Steps in Dealing with Delinquency (1945); and From Philanthropy to Social Welfare (1968).

add. bibliography:

C. Kasius (ed.), New Directions in Social Work (1954).

[Jacob Neusner]