Delhi School of Social Work

DSSW was established in August 1946 as The National Y.W.C.A. School of Social Work at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh and became the second school of social work in India after Tata Institute of Social Sciences .It was set up by the Y.W.C.A of India, Burma and Ceylon (which is now known as National Y.W.C.A of India) with substantial assistance from the Foreign division of the Y.W.C.A of United States. It started a one year programme to give training in social work to the women who were demobilsed by the armed services, known as the Women’s Auxiliary Corps of India. Ms. Nora Ventura who was then the Secretary of Religious Education Committee of the Y.W.C.A,took the directorship of the school which had two students - one from Sindh and the other from Bengal.Towards the end of 1946, Elmina R. Lucke of Y.W.C.A took over as the consultant organiser of the school.

In 1948, the school was shifted to Delhi with the support of Sir Maurice Gwyer, then Vice-Chancellor of University of Delhi and started offering social work courses of varying duration.It functioned from the old Air Force Barracks located on the corner of the Mall Road and 3 - University Road. By March 1949, the school became an “autonomus post-graduate institution of the Faculty of Social Service of the University of Delhi”and the name was changed to Delhi School of Social Work ;Dorothy Moses was appointed as the First Principal of the School. DSSW was managed by Delhi School of Social Work Society with representatives of the Y.W.C.A, the Ministries of Education and Health and the University of Delhi in its board.

In 1953, Miss Moses left the school to take up an assignment on behalf of the UNESCO in Ceylon. M.S. Gore succeeded Miss Moses as Principal who served the institution till 1962. During the tenure of Prof. S.N.Ranade, DSSW witnessed its larger integration with University of Delhi . In April 1961 DSSW was taken over by University of Delhi, with its Ph.D program and M.Phil program beginning in 1965 and 1976 respectively. The CCAW was set up by DSSW in 1971 to provide free diagnostic and therapeutic services to children and their families with emotional and behavioural problems.In 1979 Delhi School of Social Work (DSSW) became the Department of Social Work, University of Delhi. Since 1992 it has been recognized as the Department of Special Assistance (DSA) by the University Grants Commission.In 1994 , Bachelors Degree in Social work was introduced in two undergraduate colleges of Delhi University.

In 2008 the Department of Social work initiated a flood relief and rehabilitation project called UDAI(University for Development Action and Integrated learning) for 2008 Bihar flood victims under the aegis of University of Delhi. In the same year, National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) set up its State Training and Resource Centre (STRC) at DSSW for the capacity building of partner organizations implementing Targeted Intervention projects for High Risk Groups(HRG)of HIV with Delhi State AIDS Control Society. In 1992, the University Grants Commission recognized it as a Department of Special Assistance (DSA).In 2009, a Gender Resource Centre was granted by the Governing Council of Mission Convergence under the Chief Secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi to Centre for Community Action and Development at the Department.

The Department of Social Work has been ranked consecutively as the second best school of social work in India, since 2011 by the Outlook MDRA Survey