Feldman, Frances

1912 - 2008

Influential educator, researcher, consultant and advisor

Frances Lomas Feldman, born in 1912, is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Social Work at the University of Southern California, where she taught social welfare history, policy, and administration for 35 years after fifteen years in public and private social agencies as caseworker, administrator, researcher, and consultant. Although retired, she continues to be active in university and community affairs, to engage in research, and to write; her name is legend in Southern California social work circles. She represents the best in the social work profession and, because of her enormous contribution to the field, is among the first to be nominated as a living inductee into the Social Work Hall of Distinction.

Her list of accomplishments is vast, her influence significant, and her professional and personal relations life-long. Whether teaching, conducting groundbreaking studies, establishing innovative programs, or advising university presidents, special state public commissions or corporate heads or serving on public or private social welfare boards or committees, anyone who has known her has learned and been changed.

One of her early seminal research interests was the psychological and social meanings of money and work in family life; it led to several research and demonstration projects, the founding of the non-profit consumer credit counseling movement and the innovation of pioneering programs in industrial social work. She chaired the Child Welfare Division of the Los Angeles Welfare Planning Council that was instrumental in the passage of important 1950 legislation. She served as academic consultant to the McCone Commission on the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles, and the supplemental report she authored contributed to health and welfare policy changes. She takes special pride in an extensive demonstration-research project conducted in rural Alaska in the late 1960s that had important effects on Eskimo village life. Her research on the workplace and cancer health histories has been much cited in later psycho-social research in the arena of cancer.

A deep interest in history and human services led to the founding of the California Social Welfare Archives and a continuing interest in the preservation of records that reflect the social programs that flourished in Southern California during its history. As part of an institutional study of the City of Los Angeles from its birth as an American city, she documented and wrote Human Services in the City of Angels, for which she received the 2004 Wheat Award from the Southern California Historical Society.

Over the span of her professional life, she has received many awards and her remarkable career continues to this day. With a problem to solve, whether professional or personal, an amazing number of professional associates and friends turn to her for help and never go away empty-handed. A remarkable social worker and teacher, an unforgettable friend, and a force for good in California over an entire lifetime, Frances Lomas Feldman is a living example of what one person can do to make the world better.

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