Abstract

Social work in Chile finds its origins in the first decades of the 20th century from the hygienist current as a response to the Social Question facing both the country and Latin America at that time. Social work soon began to emerge as a response to the problems of society, families and the most dispossessed children who faced the onslaught of poverty and misery as a result of industrialism and the new world economic order that was installed in 1929. This The social scenario evidenced the need for the State to take charge of the situation, which gave rise to the regulation and social control of families through the intervention of the old Courts for Minors and Family, with the emergence of Socio-legal Social Work as a mechanism for social control. The evolution and trajectory of socio-legal social work in the justice administration systems and especially in the current Family Courts in the last 100 years leads us to analyze the path of the profession that is permeated by the Model of Justice, which has traveled from the approach of social irregularity to the approach of the human rights of children and adolescents. Reflecting on the experience and professional development of social workers in the current justice system is a pressing need. There has been a significant advance and development from the old "social visitors" to the current technical advisers. However, in this scenario, the Chilean Socio-Legal Social Work has not managed to generate a specific methodology of action that allows identifying an intervention method differentiated from other areas of social work, nor has it managed to develop a distinctive professional identity that allows it, in the scope of the Family Courts to recover the decisive and influential role in the decision of the family judge that characterized him for decades before the advent of oral proceedings, which led to the emergence of a new role as an operator of justice: that of counselor technician.