New Developments in Casework

Readings in Social Work, Volume 2

Eileen Younghusband

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000438277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Social Work

Originally published in 1966, this book gives examples of the most advanced thought about casework by well-known writers in England and the United States at the time. The ground covered includes: the use of some current sociological theory in casework; analysis of the interpersonal relationships in casework; new thought about the appropriate use of authority with people whose own internal controls are weak and unreliable; and recent advances in understanding and working with people who respond to action more easily than to words.

These articles by well-known authorities illustrate the increased range of insight and skill required of modern caseworkers, and at the same time are highly readable, conveying complex ideas in language refreshingly free from jargon.

1 A REVIEW OF CASEWORK METHODS*

Margaret A. G. Brown

In 1915 Mary Richmond, speaking at the American National Conference of Charities and Correction, defined social casework as: ‘The art of doing different things for and with different people by cooperating with them to achieve at one and the same time their own and society’s betterment.’¹ Although many definitions have been published since 1915 and Mary Richmond herself produced two others, which have perhaps been more frequently quoted, this still seems to express simply and succinctly the essence of casework. Father Swithun Bowers, in his thesis on The Nature of Social Casework, suggested that Mary Richmond’s definition was defective as a definition because it could be applied to endeavours beyond the scope of casework.² This is true, but here I am concerned less with semantics than with emphasizing again that skill in casework lies in the understanding of the different needs of different people in various social circumstances and in the provision of different, appropriate kinds of help.

Despite the fact that casework was defined in these terms forty-eight years ago and that much has subsequently been written on differential assessment and treatment methods, there is still a good deal of confusion about the nature of casework and the range of caseworkers’ activities. For example, in a foreword to a recent publication on casework in the child care service, the following statement occurred: ‘True casework occupies only a very small fraction of a child care officer’s working hours. It is of course fortunate that this is so, both for the officer concerned, and for the authority with a large caseload and too few child care officers. But situations do continually arise when a child care officer must take the initiative and deliberately introduce a casework approach.’¹

^* Published as a supplement to Case Conference, February 1964 (revised). Based on material collected for an unpublished dissertation ‘An Investigation into the Classification of Casework Treatment Activities.’ Domanski, Johns and Manly, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1960. ¹ Mary Richmond, The Long View. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1930, p. 374. ² Swithun Bowers, ‘The Nature and Definition of Social Casework.’ Reprinted from the Journal of Social Casework. Family Service Association of America, 1949, p. 3.

During two refresher courses and a conference for experienced caseworkers and student supervisors held during 1962, these comments were made in discussion. ‘Casework is only part of the social worker’s job. At other times he has to be authoritarian.’ ‘The caseworker has to do many things that are not pure casework—implementing the law, for instance.’ ‘We kid ourselves if we think that authority and casework are compatible.’

In an article entitled ‘The Probation Officer as Caseworker’ S. R. Eshelby states: ‘To-day’s probation officer would have no difficulty in defining his work to fit most definitions of casework, for example, (Bowers’) “Social casework is an art in which knowledge of the science of human relations and skill in relationship are used to mobilize capacities in the individual, and resources in the community appropriate for better adjustment between the client and all or any part of his total environment.” The probation officer seeks to do just this in his supervisory work, though he may attempt to do other things as well, such as discipline his client, which may put him outside the fold of caseworkers’² (my italics).

Mr Eshelby goes on to discuss some of the difficulties of probation officers in ‘applying social casework concepts’. The greatest difficulty he thinks is the probation officer himself. ‘I feel fairly confident that part of the attraction of the probation service to men is the apparent opportunity to direct other people’s lives. Even if I have deduced the wrong reason it remains true that a number of men officers and some women officers carry out their probation work in an authoritarian, directive way, paying little heed to such things as maintaining a non-judgmental attitude and self determination for the client, and apparently work successfully.

‘. . . What is emerging is that there are several types of probation depending upon the personality, attitudes and training of the probation officer. It follows that more careful matching of probation officer and client might be beneficial.

. . At present there is no certainty that the highly trained skilled caseworker is achieving better results than the man or woman who is naturally good with people carrying out simple supportive and directive work.’¹

¹ M. Brooke Willis, Foreword to Casework in Child Care, Jean Kastell. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. ix. ² S. R. Eshelby, ‘The Probation Officer as Caseworker.’ British Journal of Psychiatric Social Work, Vol. VI, No. 3, 1962, p. 126.

There are several points that I would like to comment on here. First, the implication that the use of authority and discipline is not part of casework. This seems to me to be taking too limited a view of casework and of the kinds of relationship which may be helpful to an individual at a particular time. Surely discipline can be a valuable element in casework with certain clients, especially those who feel at the mercy of strong impulses and need help or support in controlling their behaviour, or those who have experienced insecurity and disorder in their lives and temporarily require a firm framework to enable them to function satisfactorily in society. Second, Mr Eshelby suggests that there are different types of probation work, which appear to depend on the personality, attitudes and training of the probation officer, and that in consequence consideration should be given to the matching of officer and probationer. While agreeing with his observations, I would ask whether these different types of casework should not instead depend on the needs of the client, and whether caseworkers in the probation service and elsewhere should not learn to understand better these various needs and to utilize different treatment approaches with different persons. Third, the observation that there is no certainty that the highly trained worker achieves better results than the ‘naturally good’ worker carrying out simple supportive and directive work: this implies that in the past at least training programmes may not have emphasized sufficiently the variety of methods in casework with the result that students leaving such courses may have tended to place too much reliance on a narrow range of techniques, applying them indiscriminately until experience taught them otherwise.

These points are well brought out in a paper presented by Arthur Hunt at an Association of Psychiatric Social Workers’ Refresher Course in 1960, and subsequently published in Ventures in Professional Cooperation. He suggests that in approximately 55 per cent of persons under a probation officer’s supervision ‘cultural, social and heritable’ factors are prominent in causation, and he goes on to say ‘I do not feel that this type of offender either needs, or could respond to, advanced therapeutic or casework techniques’. He explains that what he means by advanced techniques is: ‘A self conscious relationship aimed at revealing transferred residues of past experience which cause perceptual distortion, and its consequences of inappropriate action and manipulation. The use of these necessarily sophisticated techniques has demanded ... an appreciation of need on the part of the subject and comparative freedom from external pressures of time and conflicting obligation. Such techniques have naturally been most frequently employed in clinical settings. ...’

¹ ibid., p. 128.

Mr Hunt suggests that the bias which appears to exist in training courses is partly due to the fact that a high proportion of casework teachers have matured and developed techniques in settings appropriate to the treatment of the neuroses, as distinct from character disorders or behaviour having a strong cultural determinant, and that ‘an impression is created among many students that comparatively inactive techniques are generally applicable in a setting such as probation’. He continues: ‘I have finally been forced to the conclusion that whilst practising officers are much alive to the value of insightful and comprehensive casework in certain circumstances (usually those which are analogous to clinical situations), they have found it extraordinarily difficult to apply advanced casework techniques generally in the probation setting... All too often attempts to apply techniques considered relevant in other settings have been frustrated.... I feel that casework techniques, with their underlying psychoanalytic origin, are still relevant (in the probation setting) and may be applied usefully and with demonstrable success; even though they may have to be modified until they are barely recognizable’¹ (my italics).

The emphasis here is on the relevance or otherwise, in the probation setting, of a small range of casework techniques directed towards the development of insight in the client. For conceptual convenience Mr Hunt sometimes refers to these techniques as ‘advanced’, while at other times he and the other authors quoted imply that this group of techniques is synonymous with, or at least representative of casework in general. This is unfortunate, but it does illustrate the tendency during recent years to think of casework in these rather limited terms. Both Mr Hunt and Mr Eshelby make it clear that in their own experience other methods of help are often more useful, and Mr Hunt has now clarified and developed his views in an interesting paper ‘Enforcement in Probation Casework’, from which two short extracts may be quoted. ‘Personal experience of a wide range of delinquents suggests that much antisocial behaviour arises from the failure of a socialization process and that the compulsive, neurotic, affectionless or seriously unbalanced person is in the minority. Moreover, recognizable in much relatively casual delinquency is the presence of poorly sublimated aggression in which the failure of primary or social institutions of control is in evidence.’... ‘The enforced relationship and casework are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, in many respects the probation casework process is enriched by enforcement, and the explanation appears to centre on the fact that enforcement is an essential component of all early socializing processes.’¹ Caseworkers in all settings have probably intuitively always recognized this and in practice adapted their methods to the differing needs of their clients, but it is helpful, especially for the beginning worker, to have the reasoning spelled out in print.

¹ A. Hunt, ‘The Psychiatric Services and the Social Services: II. Probation.’ Ventures in Professional Co-operation. Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, London, 1960, pp. 82-4.

Casework, as I see it, is a helping activity which 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 the setting of limits, to the making of comments that encourage the client to express or suppress his feelings, to examine his situation or to see connections between his present attitudes and behaviour and past experiences. (In a recent study of casework interviews in which I was involved at least sixty-two different activities initiated either by the worker or by the client were identifiable.)² These may be utilized and blended in an infinite variety of ways and the caseworker’s skill would appear to lie firstly in his ability to understand the needs of his client in relation to the needs of others, and secondly in his ability to relate to his client appropriately, and to employ such methods as will most exactly meet the latter’s changing needs. It is hardly necessary to say that this kind of skill is grounded in an extensive knowledge of human beings and society, and an awareness of self which enables the worker to use himself with discrimination in different situations. Since the vast majority of persons referred to social agencies are experiencing stress in some form I would guess that in practice, whatever the setting, most of the techniques employed by caseworkers are supportive in nature and to minimize the value of these by implying that they are not really ‘advanced’ is to present a misleading picture of casework.

Over the years various attempts have been made to analyse the casework process, to look at the numerous small activities of the caseworker during interviews and the reciprocal responses of the client, and to classify these into broad treatment methods. Until some reliable classification is arrived at, it is, of course, impossible to move on to the next stage of studying what kind of approach is successful with different clients experiencing particular kinds of problems and so to eliminate much trial and error. Before reviewing the literature, however, it may be helpful if I define the sense in which the terms ‘method’ and ‘technique’ will be used in this article. These words seem to have for many people a cold and calculating connotation, so it should be noted that neither term precludes the warm human concern that is rightly felt to be an essential part of all good social work.

¹ A. Hunt, ‘Enforcement in Probation Casework.’ British Journal of Criminology, Vol. IV, No. 3, January 1964, pp. 241-51; and in this present book, pp. 206 and 216. ² T. P. Domanski, M. M. Johns and M. A. G. Manly, ‘An Investigation of a Scheme for the classification of Casework Treatment Activities.’ Unpublished thesis. Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 1960.

Method is the more comprehensive of the two terms. The Oxford Dictionary definition is way of doing something, system of procedure, conscious regularity, orderliness’. I shall use it to include the use of relationship and constituent activities or techniques in casework in a systematic way to achieve certain broad goals. For example, casework can be directed primarily towards supporting the client’s ego and helping him to maintain or regain a personal equilibrium and an existing or previous pattern of social adjustment, in which case the method may be described as ‘supportive’; or it can be directed towards promoting the client’s self understanding with a view to effecting some change in his personality. The method might then be described as ‘modifying’ or as ‘insight development’.

Technique is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘manner of artistic execution’, ‘the part of artistic work that is reducible to formula’. I shall use it to mean the specific response of the caseworker towards the client, such as the giving of money, expressions of interest and sympathy, suggestions, interpretive comments, etc.

In 1921, Virginia Robinson published an ‘Analysis of Processes in the Records of Family Case Working Agencies.’ She stated: ‘It is important to keep clearly in mind from the outset the distinction between those (processes) that have a significance for treatment and those that have only a temporary value—details as to the mechanical process of getting things done which have no real bearing on the development of the case.

‘... As to the recording of the significant processes... there is much difference of opinion. A classification of essential processes which may be made for the convenience of this discussion is: (1) those processes which have to do with altering the material environment in order to meet the client’s needs, and (2) those that have to do with the reeducation of the client’s point ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• 1. A Review of Casework Methods
• 2. A New Look at Casework
• 3. The Generic and Specific in Social Casework Re-Examined
• 4. The Role Concept and Social Casework: Some Explorations
• 5. Identity Problems, Role, and Casework Treatment
• 6. The Function and Use of Relationship Between Client and Psychiatric Social Worker
• 7. The Function and Use of Relationship in Psychiatric Social Work
• 8. Transference and Reality in the Casework Relationship
• 9. Typologies for Caseworkers: Some Considerations and Problems
• 10. Casework Techniques in the Child Care Services
• 11. Enforcement in Probation Casework
• 12. Worker-Client Authority Relationships in Social Work