Fifty years ago, Henry Kempe and his colleagues stunned the nation with their “discovery” of child abuse. The JAMA article in which the revelation was made created a social movement resulting in the child protection system as we know it today.

At the time, Kempe and his colleagues concluded that battered child syndrome affected perhaps several hundred children annually in the United States. Five decades hence, we know that the number of annual child maltreatment reports is closer to three million. Worldwide data are difficult to gather, but it is likely that millions of children across the globe suffer violence, exploitation, and abuse every day, and that many more lack the fulfillment of their basic needs.

This example illustrates the scope of change in social issues across time. Child maltreatment did not increase because of Kempe’s work. Rather, people saw child maltreatment differently because they grew in their understanding of what they were seeing. This analysis is germane to any number of social issues. Over five decades, new knowledge has emerged, and policy and program responses have been implemented, evaluated, and adjusted or abandoned. Social concerns have risen or fallen in importance, priorities have shifted, and new issues have emerged. The more we look at the challenges before us, the more we realize just how different things have become. However, service systems often look more or less as they did decades ago.

In 1960, the family model was a breadwinning father, a stay-at-home mom, and two to three children. Today this constellation represents a small fraction of families. The divorce rate has doubled since the mid-1960s, and the number of families headed by a single woman has tripled. In 1960, just 8% of children lived with a single mother. Today that figure is near 25%.

Changes in sexual mores and perceptions of gender roles account for some of this change. In 1960, about 5% of children of single-parent households lived with a mother who had never been married. Fifty years later, nearly half of all children in single-parent families live with a mother who has never been married.

One result of this trend has been the “feminization” of poverty, particularly among women of color. The proportion of children in poor families headed by a single mother grew from about 23% in 1960 to nearly 60% today. Today, the poverty rate among African American single female-headed households is about 44% compared to about 32% for White single mothers. Although nearly one-quarter of all children live in a poor family, just one in eight white, non-Hispanic children are poor, but more than one in three African American and Hispanic children live in poverty.

Racial and ethnic disparities extend beyond those characterizing poverty. The 23% difference in high school completion rates between Whites and African Americans has all but disappeared since the 1970s, but there is still a 20% gap between both groups and Hispanics. The wage gap among racial and ethnic groups persists, more dramatically so when gender is considered. In 1970, African American men had 69% the earnings of White men, White women earned 59% as much, and African American women earned less than half as much. Today, African American men have three-fourths the earnings of White men, White women earn 81% as much, and African American women 70% as much. And, there are other indications of social disparity.

There are many other challenges and opportunities to consider. Poverty continues to rise in the United States, and the U.S. poverty rate is among the highest among the developed nations. Despite high per capita expenditures on education, the United States ranks 18th among industrialized nations in educational outcomes. With a rapidly aging population, the United States seems unable to devise a workable approach to assuring the economic security of its elderly citizens. Gun violence is a growing problem, with about 30,000 gun deaths annually and more than twice that number of people wounded by guns. Our most vulnerable citizens face multiple hazards on a daily basis.

With a depth of need that boggles the mind, the United States continues to have an extraordinarily fragmented and underfunded system of social care. The promise of community mental health as a system of health promotion has given way in many communities to an overburdened system of tertiary care. The disparity between those who can afford health care and those who cannot continues to grow as health care costs soar, and public hospitals stagger under the burden of uncollected debt. The emphasis on testing educational outcomes sometimes may overshadow the primary purpose of schools to teach children. Challenges persist in ensuring that basic needs are met for the poorest among us. Families headed by young adults are particularly vulnerable to changes in real income and the structure of the work force.

At the same time, in the past 50 years, extraordinary changes have occurred in the civil rights recognized for ethnic minorities, women, older adults, and people with disabilities. Less broadly but still importantly, attitudes toward gay men and lesbians have changed positively, and the recognition of children and adolescents as people deserving of protection and respect is also closer to a universal value.

Apart from these differences in role and status, the ways that we spend our time have changed enormously. The growth of information technology has changed everyday life dramatically and mostly positively.  People are also less connected, with fewer relationships that they count upon for social support. These changes have been accompanied by institutional changes — bureaucratization of some; weakening of others — that have altered the structure and processes of human services agencies, like most other segments of society.

The Fourth Annual Greenville Family Symposium offers a forum for constructive dialogue on these and related issues, an opportunity to test ideas among peers, and to engage collectively in crafting policy and program responses to the most pressing issues of our time. We will look backward to see how well human services adapted to changes in social realities — what went well, what didn’t, what even made things worse, and what is still unsettled. In that context, we will also look forward and consider the ways that human service professionals and organizations can help both families and communities to enjoy greater well-being as resources ebb and flow and as ideas come and go. How can a better understanding of these large-scale trends illuminate the challenges for individual families? What can human service professionals do to facilitate positive outcomes for their clients and communities in a changing context?