The history of social and health care — from housekeeping to professional care

When you help a citizen get up in the morning give medicines on time or sit with someone struggling you're part of a trade built on people's care for each other through history. But the trade itself — with education responsibility and professional knowledge — is relatively young and has developed rapidly in recent decades.

§Care before the profession existed

For long periods, the care of the sick, elderly and weak was something families — often women — took care of at home. In hospitals and poorhouses, the care was previously provided by, among others, religious orders and staff without formal training. Knowledge went from hand to hand, and there was far less to do than we have today. The care was genuine, but was based more on experience and duty than on professional knowledge.

§Nursing becomes organised

A major step towards professional care came with modern nursing. Englishman Florence Nightingale worked in the mid-1800s to make nursing an educated profession focusing on hygiene observation and system. She showed among other things that clean conditions and good care save lives. His work laid the foundation for care to be seen as a profession that requires knowledge and education — not just goodness.

§How it was before in Denmark

In Denmark care and support tasks in homes and institutions were long handled by staff with different titles and educations. Throughout the 1900s the need for care staff grew as more became elderly and the public took on more responsibility for care. Various helper and assistant educations existed before they were combined and modernized. Everyday life was often marked by many tasks per employee and fewer aids than we know today.

• 01Care observation and support close to the citizen
• 02Hospital care by religious orders and untrained staff.
• 03Knowledge went from hand to hand rather than from education.
• 04Fewer tools and many tasks per employee.

§The modern education arises

In Denmark the social and health professions as we know them were established as a unified vocational education in the early 1990s. It combined earlier helper and assistant educations in a modern structure with both a helper and an assistant part. This gave care work a clear professional framework: an educational process with theory and practice clear competencies and a defined responsibility. This made care more uniform safe and professionally grounded.

§A trade with growing responsibility

Over time, the social and healthcare assistant has taken on increasingly greater professional responsibility. Today you not only provide practical help and care, but also healthcare tasks such as medicine management, observation of the user's condition and coordination of care. You work in home care, in care homes, in hospitals and in psychiatry. This places great demands on both professional knowledge and human compassion — and makes the profession a cornerstone of the health service.

§The craft today.

Today social and health assistant is a recognized profession with thorough education and great responsibility. You combine practical care and support with health care tasks you observe and document the citizen's condition and you are often the one closest to the citizen in everyday life. The long historical line from family and monastery care to today's professional education is about one thing: making care for the sick and frail both caring and professionally safe.

“Humans have always given each other care — what's new is that we've made it a profession with knowledge, responsibility and training behind it.”