Social Services

Like many religious communities, members of the Church have a long history of aiding the poor and responding to those in need. During the early years of the Church, broader American society embraced women’s charity work, and women often led welfare efforts in both religious and civic settings. At its founding in 1842 and during its revitalization in the 1860s, the Relief Society looked to follow the Christian mandate to care for the poor by gathering donations and directing community resources toward addressing temporal needs. Latter-day Saint women taught classes on caring for the sick and about the human body, as well as gathered and stored grain, established the Deseret Hospital, trained nurses and midwives, and coordinated relief efforts with local bishops.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Relief Society began to embrace new, experimental approaches to caring for people’s needs, often called “scientific charity” at the time, by building systems of social support, promoting community involvement, and collaborating with civic agencies. The emerging profession and field of social work also gave the rising generation of Latter-day Saint women opportunities to join in the social progress movement of the time and share growing knowledge of nutrition and home sciences. Editors of the Relief Society Magazine published articles suited to such interests and developed new Relief Society curricula around these subjects. Church leaders assembled a Social Advisory Committee in 1916 to address concerns over social troubles, including public health and moral issues. The committee looked to train social workers as part of Church-sponsored community revitalization efforts. Amy Brown Lyman, the general secretary of the Relief Society and a professionally trained social worker, helped develop and expand associated programs.

Amy Brown Lyman and a group of women at a social service training meeting in Anaconda, Montana, circa 1920.

During World War I, social workers and members of the Relief Society contributed to the war effort on the home front, assisting with food production and Red Cross projects, including making surgical bandages, mittens, and socks. They concentrated on improving infant and maternal mortality, joined campaigns to improve child healthcare in the United States, and coordinated charity work in the Church and with outside partners. Soon before his death, Church President Joseph F. Smith tasked Amy Brown Lyman with launching a social services department in the Relief Society, which she accomplished in 1919. In the late 1920s, the Social Service Department began to oversee adoption placement, a hallmark of the organization’s work until 2014.

Prior to the Great Depression in the 1930s, the Social Service Department managed the welfare cases of economically disadvantaged members of the Church in Utah. This social work arrangement continued until social workers were mobilized by the federal government at the height of the Depression. During this period of economic uncertainty, the Church established a security plan that eventually developed into the permanent Welfare Department. The Social Service Department also increased its efforts to care for children, and in 1937, the Relief Society reconfigured the department into the Social Service and Child Welfare Department. Social service operations across the Church expanded in Los Angeles, California, and Ogden, Utah, in the 1930s and 1940s. The Social Service and Child Welfare Department continued to hire professional social workers, added resources for single mothers, created a youth guidance program, and served as an employment agency for women. Because this department was licensed to provide child welfare services, in 1954 Church leaders transferred the Indian Student Placement Program, a hosting and fellowshipping program for Native American students, to its purview.

Workers assembling a wheelchair during a welfare services training in Kenya.

In the latter decades of the 20th century, Church leaders worked to consolidate and coordinate organizations and programs as part of a Churchwide correlation effort. At this time, the Presiding Bishopric oversaw social services work. Through several name changes between 1969 and 2019, the Church’s social services organization consistently supported unwed expectant mothers and child adoption without regard to church affiliation and functioned as one of the largest private adoption agencies in the United States. Latter-day Saints and others received additional support through referrals from bishops, particularly for professional counseling, addiction recovery programs, parenting classes, and structured outreach to incarcerated individuals. By 2000, the organization maintained 6 offices in Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as 57 offices in the United States. Although it ceased operating as an adoption agency in 2014, by 2023 Family Services continued to support adoptions by guiding prospective adoptive parents through the process.

Bibliography

The following publications provide further information about this topic. By referring or linking you to these resources, we do not endorse or guarantee the content or the views of the authors.

Jill Mulvay Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992).

Thomas G. Alexander, “Between Revivalism and the Social Gospel: The Latter-day Saint Social Advisory Committee, 1916–1922,” BYU Studies, vol. 23, no. 1 (1983): 19–39.

Dave Hall, “Relief Society Educational and Social Welfare Work, 1900–29,” in David J. Whittaker and Arnold K. Garr, eds., A Firm Foundation: Church Organization and Administration (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 361–75.

John P. Livingstone, “Historical Highlights of LDS Family Services,” in Scott C. Esplin and Kenneth L. Alford, eds., Salt Lake City: The Place Which God Prepared (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 285–303.