Community Services Intervention

An introduction to direct practice

Vera Lloyd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000256628
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Community Services Intervention provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory, models and principles of practice for direct social casework.It introduces the history and context of professional practice, provides a step-by-step guide to the key skills, demonstrates how theory supports intervention processes and outlines how to work with other professionals to assist clients to achieve best possible outcomes.Reflecting the broad spectrum of casework settings and the need to take client diversity into account, it addresses: community care for the aged; people with a disability; people with mental health issues; acute health settings; injury management and insurance; correctional services; court systems; child and youth welfare; drug and alcohol work; at-risk populations in schools; managed care; and employment programs.With case studies, reflective practice questions, and templates for reports and assessments, Community Services Intervention is an ideal introductory student text.'Good practical advice that expands on theoretical approaches; a fantastic learning resource.' - Suewellyn Kelly, community consultant and VET educator, Queensland 'The evidence base in all areas of the content is thorough, well grounded in theory and clearly articulated throughout this useful and practical text.'- Dianne Sutherland, TAFE NSW Riverina Institute

1
Introduction to social casework

Social casework

Man is a social animal who necessarily must cooperate with and assist his fellow man … (Aristotle, 386–322 BC)

The term ‘social casework’ refers to ‘social’, from the Latin socius meaning member, friend, or ally in human society, its organisation and its population. ‘Work’ is from the Old English weorc and German werc, meaning to complete a specific task or transitively influence, effect or improve by varying degrees. Social casework is essentially a problem-solving modality, which historically has been related to the social work profession. Its concepts originated from the works of Richmond (1917), Perlman (1957), Hamilton (1940) and others. The practice of social casework is applied in most human services, social welfare, and social and community services contexts as a model of intervention—a process to help individuals cope more effectively with their problems in social functioning (Perlman, 1957). Zastrow (2013) provides a contemporary view of social casework as being:

aimed at helping individuals on a one-to-one basis to resolve personal and social problems … geared to helping clients adjust to their environment or to changing certain social or economic pressures that are adversely affecting them.

Much casework knowledge and skills originates from individualising human beings in the poverty situation, and from the study of the global relief and charity organisations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Social casework is one of the oldest professional forms of community services practice. Its form and focus have changed over time, and continue to do so in response to the environment, but its fundamental and traditional basis remains the same.

In 1937, Gordon Hamilton wrote: ‘When we think of fundamental concepts we are inclined to imagine a static practice. The truth is that casework concepts are dynamic. They change, grow and develop as they are shaped by new experience and knowledge.’ (Roberts & Nee, 1970: 35). Despite being written over 75 years ago, Hamilton’s statement remains true in practice today.

The work of Mary Ellen Richmond (1917) provides valuable insight into how charity evolved into social casework. She defines social casework as the art of doing different things for and with different people by cooperating with them to achieve simultaneously their own and society’s betterment. Richmond’s model for social casework concerns those processes that develop personality through adjustments consciously effected, individually, between people and their social environment. According to this definition, casework is recognisable by its aim of social betterment and its method of differential treatment.

According to Richmond, social casework includes using a person-in-environment or care-centred approach. These address all the systems that affect an individual and their functioning. This type of casework allows the practitioner and the client to try to find a resolution to the client’s problems by establishing which system is causing the issues (Hiersteiner & Peterson, 1999). Such systems might include family, community, work, education, health, social policies, legislation and justice services.

The approach assumes that an individual’s life difficulty should also be addressed by determining the social and political factors that may be contributing to the problem, and thus causing the client’s dysfunction.

A further definition provided by Bowers (1949) refers to social casework as an art in which knowledge of the science of human relations and skills in relationships is used to mobilise capacities in the individual and resources in the community that are appropriate for better adjustment between the client and all, or any part, of their total environment.

We can add the views of Brown (1977), who further defines social casework as a helping activity that is made up of a very large number of constituent activities, ranging from the giving of material assistance, through listening, expressing acceptance and reassurance, suggesting, advising and setting of limits, to the making of comments that encourage the client to express or suppress their feelings, to examine their situation or to see connections between their current attitudes and behaviour, and past experiences.

Case management and casework are similar in that they are both viewed as approaches from the human services/community services areas used in working with complex individual, group or community cases. Where they differ is that casework refers to practical day-to-day involvement with people, their carers, families and significant others. It generally takes a problem-solving approach, including implementation of the case plan, coordination of services and supports, and monitoring activities that can be shared between service providers. Case management is the process of assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring and review of intervention plans.

Case management aims to strengthen outcomes for individuals and groups through integrated and coordinated service delivery to provide a managed approach to linking services with the needs of the client, operating like a coordinating system in order to achieve outcomes for the client (NSW Department of Community Services [DoCS], 2008).

History and trends

Although casework as a method of helping people has been present in every society since ancient times, the professional method of casework originated in the United States with the establishment of the American Charity Organ-isation Society in 1877.

The aims of the society were to find ways to help the ‘poor and needy’, and to organise individualised services. It used volunteers called ‘friendly visitors’, who visited the homes of the poor in order to assess their need, render material assistance and offer guidance and advice. The ‘friendly visitors’ were soon supplemented by ‘paid agents’ or ‘paid helpers’, who gradually developed systematic procedures for performing their tasks. They collected data about the needy individuals and provided help after assessing their needs. They also maintained records, in which they kept personal data and noted the type of help rendered. It was out of the practice of these early workers that casework developed gradually to become a professional method in the field of social work in subsequent years. The knowledge and experiences of workers of the time, and the concurrent studies of poverty by social scientists, broadened the existing understanding of human behaviour. There was a growing recognition that both forces within the individual and forces external to them influenced each person’s behaviour and functioning.

The emergence and acceptance of Freudian theory in the 1920s had a major influence on the American perspective of social casework. Much of the knowledge of the time was based on working with ‘shell-shocked’ patients during the war. The new psychoanalytical understanding of human behaviour was absorbed by caseworkers, and found to be useful in understanding clients and their problems.

During this period of development, caseworkers focused their attention on psychical forces within the individual, and also the realisation that economic distress could lead to emotional distress and breakdown. Physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists working with emotionally disturbed soldiers saw the caseworker as a natural ally. They began using caseworkers as specialists in social adjustment.

Such vital activities were outside the profession’s traditional constituency of the poor and indigent, and opened up new opportunities for caseworkers. Within a short time, social casework made a radical shift, and the concept of ‘relationship’ became a part of the caseworker’s working toolkit. The Freudian influence further reshaped the role of the caseworker departing from one of ‘doer’ to that of a passive observer. With this came the concept of a detached professional attitude, with an emphasis on the worker keeping their emotions at bay. The use of the Freudian technique also limited services to those ‘patients’ who could respond to a less active approach to intervention. World War I provided unique opportunities for social caseworkers to prove the utility of their skills on non-poverty populations.

Another major event that marked social casework’s ascendancy was the publication of Mary Richmond’s Social Diagnosis (1917). For several decades, Richmond had been attempting to turn the practical techniques and skills commonly known as casework into a more systematic approach. After honing her ideas through workshops, lectures and articles, Richmond put her ideas into the first definitive text on casework, What is Social Casework (1922), which propelled casework from being just one of a number of approaches used by charity workers into a major form of practice.

The Milford Conference of 1927 (in Pennsylvania) created the principle of ‘generic’ social casework that delineated the title caseworkers had held as being specific to the field in which it was practised: they were children’s caseworkers, hospital social workers, family workers and so on. The outcomes of the Milford Conference provided social caseworkers with a more substantial role that was more significant in its implications than the emphasis on the various casework fields had been. The conference specified social casework as working towards ‘the human being whose capacity to organise his [sic] own normal social activities may be impaired by one or more social deviations from accepted standards of social life’ (Milford Conference Report, 1929). In 1928, the American Association of Social Workers published a report of the Milford Conference, Social Case Work, Generic and Specific, which emphasised the common base of practice among all social caseworkers, regardless of area of specialisation.

One major outcome of the Great Depression of the 1930s was the establishment of governmental public assistance programs. This relieved the voluntary agencies from the tasks of providing economic help, which enabled caseworkers to devote more time to dealing with clients’ interpersonal problems. Teaching staff were delivering psychoanalytical principles as a basis for casework practice, and it was not unusual for both teachers and students to undergo psychoanalytical therapy as part of their training.

During the 1940s, caseworkers were exposed to the formulations on ego psychology based on the observations of human beings with regard to their differential coping and adapting abilities in times of stress. The new studies of human behaviour brought to light the potentialities of the human personality for healthy adaptation to life’s stressors. During the next two decades, some casework theoreticians began to examine sociological concepts like social role, social system and social class, with reference to their applicability to casework situations. The result was a shift in focus from the individual’s inner life to their continuous interactions with significant others in social settings.

In 1945, a new constitution created the American National Social Welfare Assembly Council, which determined that structural and functional alterations were ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Introduction
• 1 Introduction to social casework
• 2 Professional responsibilities and practice standards
• 3 Practitioner characteristics and attitudes
• 4 The client
• 5 The change process in practice
• 6 Assessments
• 7 Practice approaches: Models of intervention
• 8 Rationale for intervention: Working with difference
• 9 The contexts of practice
• 10 Professional knowledge
• References
• Index