The 1960s was a time of great changes in community work in Scotland.

The Kilbrandon report — published 50 years ago in 1964 — contained proposals that led to the Children’s Hearings in which lay people made decisions about social work.

This culminated in the Social Work (Scotland) Act of 1968 which amalgamated personal social services into social work departments. Its section 12 placed a requirement on local authorities to “promote social welfare,” which opened the door to financial support to local communities.

The social work departments took time to organise and to adapt to new regional authorities. But several top managers were attempting to place services in the context of their communities. This was strengthened by the publication of the Barclay report (Social Workers: Their Role and Tasks) in 1982.

Its main proposal was that local authorities should practise community social work with staff based in neighbourhoods. Although written south of the border, it was well read in Scotland.

The best-known social work director was Fred Edwards in Strathclyde. Born on a council estate and experienced as a probation officer, he understood life at the hard end. He found time to work personally with the homeless and alcoholics.

He saw his services as a means of promoting social justice. His radicalism was revealed in the creation of welfare rights officers and community development staff to help residents start their own groups.

During the 1984-5 miners’ strike, he authorised loans totalling £191,000 to hard-up miners and only narrowly escaped an order to pay it with his own money.

Strathclyde was one of the regions to decentralise its social work.

In the part of Easterhouse, Glasgow, where I lived, the social work team occupied two flats which contained a washing machine for public use and a telephone which was not vandalised.

People who had kept clear of officials would come in.

Social workers got to know residents who were a resource and could start and run local groups.

One objection was that community social work would take up time better directed at children vulnerable to abuse or neglect.

In fact these cases were more swiftly dealt with as social workers learnt of them at an early stage.

Another surge in the community came with family centres which Neil McKechnie of the Association of Scottish Family  Centres defined as “community-based provision for parents and their children.”

In the 1980s, I visited a family centre in Falkirk run by the Aberlour Child Care Trust. As with most voluntary family centres, its day care for under-fives and drop-in facilities for parents were open to all in the local community.

Those under local authority control tended to draw in families known to social workers.

As I showed in a study of family centres, both kinds were successful in helping families without imparting stigma (Putting Families First. Prevention and Child Care, 1988).

Mention must also be made of locally run community projects. In the mid-1980s in Easterhouse I joined with residents who opened a cafe for teenagers in a boarded up shop.

We received help from one of Fred Edward’s community workers. On being ejected from the shop, we formed Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse (Fare) which 25 years later has its own large building and over 30 staff, mainly local and part-time.

However from the 1990s, the emphasis on communities began to decline. Statutory community development staff were almost unknown.

In Easterhouse, the community social work teams were absorbed into one large building with entry depending on knowing the right door buttons. The number of family centres have also decreased.

Tom White, a childcare officer, rose to be an outstanding director of Coventry social services department, where he initiated effective services in communities.

After serving as head of a national voluntary society for 15 years, he returned to Coventry. “The structure of community-based, locally accessible services … had been judged too expensive and all service was provided from specialist teams based in the centre of the city,” he wrote in his book The Surprise of My Life (2010). He  added that one result was that more children were at risk.

The decline of community services inspired by local authorities was  partly due to the centralist  doctrines of a new breed of top manager with little experience of work at the front.

Simultaneously, government was exerting financial pressures on the social services.

On top of this has come George Osborne’s billion-pound welfare cuts, supported by Labour. One result is that local authorities have even less to give to  voluntary community projects. Another is that the huge increase in poverty has meant many more demands on the same projects.

Despite this, local groups have still managed to expand food banks. The Easterhouse Baptist Church has opened a cafe with low prices run completely by volunteers. Best of all, the referendum saw enormous local activity which — at least in the Yes camp — is continuing.

Scottish Labour MPs should respond in three ways.

First speak publicly against Labour’s support for the welfare cuts. Second, get involved with community action. Third, they should donate their 10 per cent pay increase to voluntary bodies — especially community ones.

Bob Holman was one of the local founders of Fare. He is the author of Woodbine Willie — An Unsung Hero of World War One, Lion Hudson, 2013.