The California Association of School Social Workers records consist primarily of correspondence, 1927-1995, that documents the development of this organization from its roots in the California Association of Visiting Teachers. In addition to the correspondence, the records also contain meeting minutes, agendas, newsletters, programs, and reports. Among the subjects discussed are: the founding and role of the California State Association of Visiting Teachers and activities of its members; activities of the American Association of Visiting Teachers and its activities in California; membership requirements for the AAVT; training for visiting teachers in California; the establishment of training programs in California, specifically in cooperation with the USC School of Social Work; discussions of curricula for training programs; establishment of the National Association of School Social Workers California chapters, the School Social Work section of the National Association of Social Workers, and finally the California Association of School Social Workers.

Visiting teachers, who neither taught nor did much visiting but were essentially school-based social workers, appeared in American schools in the first decade of the century with the beginning of compulsory school attendance. The first school-financed visiting teacher was employed by the Hartford, Connecticut, school system in 1908. In 1919, eighty such workers, employed in ten eastern cities, established the National Association Visiting Teachers and Home Visitors. In 1923 the Commonwealth Fund of New York supported, as part of a delinquency prevention program, a three-year demonstration of visiting teacher work in cooperation with 30 school districts across the country, including the district for the then relatively small and remote city of San Diego, California. The San Diego school district, which already employed a psychologist in 1920 and would be a pioneer in the use of psychiatrists, retained its visiting teacher and hired another when the Commonwealth Fund's demonstration project came to an end. By 1935 it had a well equipped Bureau of Child Reference and Counsel with a staff of 15, including visiting teachers, guidance and attendance workers, home tutors and speech therapists.The California Association of School Social Workers was founded in 1966, when school social workers in California acted upon the recognized need for a state-wide professional organization that could represent their interests with the State's Department of Education. It was the natural outgrowth of a number of organizations that had flourished both in California and across the country for some decades, all of which are represented in these records. Beginning with the National and American Association of Visiting Teachers (the term used to describe professionals engaged in social work with school children in their homes), the importance of the school-based social worker became increasingly apparent to social workers across the country. The California State Association of Visiting Teachers was founded in 1930, and affiliated with the AAVT. The AAVT changed its name to the American Association of School Social Workers in the early 1940s, and again to the National Association of School Social Workers in the early 1950s. In 1955, the NASSW merged with the National Association of Social Workers, creating the School Social Work Section of that organization.

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