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Table of Content

Unit I Introduction to Social Case Work 1-41

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Definition, Nature, Objectives, and Historical
Development of Social Casework
Definitions
Nature
Objectives
Historical Development
1.2 Concepts of Adjustment and Maladjustment
1.3 Introduction of Casework as a Method of
Social Work and Related Concepts
Social Work
Social Work Methods
Social Casework as a Method of Social Work
Related Concepts
1.4 Key Components of Social Casework
Person
Problem
Place
Process
1.5 Purpose, Value, and Assumptions of
Purpose
Value
Basic Assumptions of Social Casework
1.6 Principles of the Casework
Individualization
Acceptance
Non-Judgmental Attitude
Participation
Relationship
Effective Communication of Feeling
Client Self-Determination
Confidentiality
1.7 Process in Casework: Study, Assessment,
Intervention, Termination, Evaluation, and
Follow-up
Study
Assessment
Intervention
Termination
Evaluation
Follow up
Unit II Theories and Approaches to Social
Casework 41-69
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Problem
Problems Faced by Individual and Families
 Individual Differences and Needs: Family
Assessment in Casework Practice
2.2. Theories and Approaches
The Cognitive Techniques
Transactional Analysis
Psycho-Social Approach: Adapted Planned
Behavior Model
Functional Approach: Psychological Assessment
Problem-Solving Approach: McMaster Model
of Family Functioning
Crisis Theory
Family Intervention
Behavioral Modification Theory: Cognitive-
Behavioral Couple Therapy
Unit III Tools and Techniques 71-97
3.0 Caseworker’s Tools
Listening
Interview
Observation
Building Relationships
Home Visit
3.1 Records
Nature
Purpose
Principles of Recordings
3.2 Methods of Casework
Supportive Methods
 Resource Enhancement Methods
Counseling
3.4. Self as a Profession
Self-Concept in Social Casework
Unit IV Primary and Secondary Settings in Social
Casework 99-112
4.0 Primary and Secondary Settings
4.1 Application of Social Casework Methods in Family,
Women, and Child Welfare Setting
Family Welfare Settings
Women Welfare Settings
Child Welfare Settings
4.2. Application of Social Casework in Marriage
Counseling Centers, School Settings, Medical and
Psychiatric Settings, Correctional Institutes, and
Industries
Marriage Counseling Centers
School Settings
Medical and Psychiatric Settings
Correctional Institutes
Industries
Unit V Social Casework Case Study 113-127
5.0 Case Study on Alcoholism
5.0 Case Study on Covid-19
Reference 127-142
 Preface

“Social Casework- Theories and Practices” in the form of the

book is a dream come true to us. More than 15 years of teaching
experiences lead us to put our expertise and knowledge in a book for
social work students. Sincere attempts have been made to promote
social work practice and knowledge in India. We have created an
effort to showcase the social casework- theories and practices. We
have attempted to gather all aspects related to social casework and
the course of the social work.
This book furnishes concepts of Social Work and Social Case
Work in view point of the students appearing for the Course. An at-
tempt has been made to trace the history of social casework with
definition, nature, objectives, and development. Casework relates to
the method of social work and related concepts are presented in the
first chapter. The book furnishes theories and approaches to social
casework in the second chapter. Casework tools, records, and meth-
ods of casework and Professional Self are attempted in the third chap-
ter.
Applying Social Casework Methods in various settings in the
fourth section is attempted. Examples of Social Case Work are pro-
vided towards the end of the fifth chapter to allow the readers to
understand the Social Case Work method. The book would give a
friendly approach to the students in guiding them to get knowledge
about the Social Case Work in present scenario.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 1

Unit-1
Introduction to Social Case Work
2 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Introduction to Social Case Work 3

Chapter Overview
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Definition, Nature, Objectives, and Historical Development
of Social Casework
1.2 Concepts of Adjustment and Maladjustment
1.3 Introduction of Casework as a Method of Social Work and
Related Concepts
1.4 Key Components of Social Case Work
• Person
• Problem
• Place
• Process
1.5 Purpose, Value, and Assumptions of Social Case Work
1.6 Principles of Case Work
• Individualization
• Acceptance
• Non-judgmental Attitude
• Participation
• Relationship
• Effective Communication of Feeling
• Client’s Self-determination
• Confidentiality
1.7 Process in Case Work
• Study
• Assessment
4 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

• Intervention
• Termination
• Evaluation
• Follow-up
 Introduction to Social Case Work 5

1.0 INTRODUCTION
Humans by nature are social animals. When people socialize
relationship begins to develop and the interaction arises a diverse range
of problems that may be specific or common to individuals. In a
society, one may experience that integrating with people is probably
an easy task but the more one involves with the surroundings, various
issues begin to breathe. Issues may be related to family or/and pro-
fessional life, workplace, facility services like school, hospitals, and
banks. In such a situation an individual need to adjust to the ongoing
conditions with the motive to dismantle chaos with the inner self. In
similar critical situations, social casework comes into play. Social
casework is an elemental way of social services, it is a medium where
social workers help a person adjust to a situation, that is not as per
their expectations. The objective of social casework is to create more
cheering relations where people live together in a society with endur-
ance and construct a better space to survive. Simply it can be under-
stood as “a group of practical interventions that try to improve the
situations in people’s lives” (Gray and Webb, 2009 pg. 13). It is
more concerned with adapting and evolving which means to accom-
modate a situation, people need good family life, better and economi-
cal health care facilities, sensitive and cooperative schools, and a har-
monized society. This implies a society has to be such that developing
together do not bring inconvenience in others life.
1.1 DEFINITION, NATURE, OBJECTIVES, AND
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL CASE-
WORK
6 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Definitions
The pioneer in the field of social casework was Mary Richmond,
also known as the ‘mother of social casework’, who first brought
forward the issues of the human beings and their adjusting nature with
the surrounding elements through her book Social Diagnosis (1917).
She ushered the idea that how a situation of a person can be made
better with the help of social workers. She developed the concept of
social work into a professional methodology in her book ‘What is
social case work?’ and propounded ‘neighborliness theory’ (Rich-
mond, 1922 p.7) of social caseworkers assisting the people to feel
good about their surroundings. In her words, social casework is about
“better adjustments between individuals and their social environment”
(Richmond, 1922 p. 259).
Gordon Hamilton, an educator and a social worker defines the
same in precise terms by keeping situational factors like economical
and personal components intact to comprehend the importance of
circumstances. He defines “casework is concerned with the release
of resources in the immediate environment and capacities in the indi-
vidual which will give him a fuller and more satisfying life both eco-
nomic and personal” (Hamilton, 1940. p.12)
Another famous personality in the line is Swithun Bowers, direc-
tor of School of Social Welfare (Canada) who in his work ‘The na-
ture and definition of social casework’ (1950, p.10) definedsocial
casework in terms of the art where the focus is to maintain a balance
between resources and individual need for the smooth functioning of
society. He explains “social casework is an art in which knowledge...
are used to mobilize capacities in the individual and resource in the
community appropriate for better adjustment” between the individual
and (all or any part of) his total environment”.
Perlman, a famous social work educator (1957, p.4) defined
“social casework is a process used by certain human welfare agency
to help individuals to cope more effectively with their problems in
social functioning.” The definition speaks about how social case-
 Introduction to Social Case Work 7

workers use the method of social casework to eliminate the problems

of society and realizes the fact that elimination of problems is a critical
aspect of the proper functioning of society.
Gradually the meaning of social casework has been worked upon
to make it comprehensible by social work researchers. One such
easy and filtered definition has been provided by IGNOU (2015,
p.5) “the purpose of case work is to help people to handle their prob-
lem of social functioning effectively.” Social functioning in simple terms
means the interaction of an individual with their environment. Where
social caseworkers help to overcome issues arising because of these
interactions. To present the meaning of social casework in the words
of Dassi (2020), Social casework is the primary method of working
with individuals in human welfare organizations to help clients cope
more efficiently with their problems in the context of their social func-
tioning. She also emphasized in her definition the importance of com-
munity-based functions and how these functions bring in the issues in
an individual’s life.
All the above-mentioned definition includes three major aspects
that are individual, society, and social interaction. Hence, it is evident
from the aforesaid definitions that for the existence of social casework
there must be a society where due to the interactions among individu-
als various problems begin to arise. The complete work of social
casework in one form or another tends to regard these factors essen-
tially.
Nature
Interpretation of the intrinsic features of social casework is
predominant to perceive the essence of social work in the life of an
individual and society as a whole. As insight has been developed
about how the interactions arise different issues in the life of an indi-
vidual and how to cope up with these issues social case-workers help
them. Social caseworkers make the situation adjustable for people
so that may have a less stressed life. Thus it can be said that the basic
nature of social casework is problem-solving (Durgaube, 2020).
8 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

A social-worker for an efficient problem solver must possess a

few characteristics for a better understanding of a person. Features
like compassion and empathy are essential to be conscious of the
mental and emotional well being of people around us. Social work
tends to seek two things for people, first is economic well-being, which
is financial stability, and the second is the deeper source of happiness,
which is self-realization. The concern is human behavior and relation-
ships. The focus of attention is the individual and his self-adjustment
to a recognized reality (Youngdahl,1949) because until and unless the
individual realizes the fact that there is a problem, there is no point in
providing help to resolve the issue.
In the modern world, social casework has been now organized
by nations at different levels. It is important to comprehend that the
consumer or clients of these services are individuals. Many problems
are common as well as unique for people hence, social case-workers
assist the individual with their individualized characteristics and needs,
keeping the information of the client confidential.
In a broader sense, social casework is based on humanitarian
grounds which relies on the fact that the problems are to be resolved
giving sheer importance at the same time protecting an individual’s
dignity and worth. Putting aside all the other factors such as race,
caste, sex, or religion, the social worker should only be interested in
how the conflicts or issues are to be addressed without creating fur-
ther troubles for them.
Objectives
All-embracing social casework, let’s now know the objectives
behind social caseworkers’ occupation of helping others with selfless
motive. To have a better understanding of the basic purpose for which
the social workers dedicate their lives for others. To know thor-
oughly let acknowledge the objectives of social work as given by P.D
Mishra (Misra, 1994) :
• Solve psycho-social and adjustment problems
• Fulfill humanitarian needs and develop democratic values
 Introduction to Social Case Work 9

• Create self-sufficiency and raise awareness in the community

• Strengthen and make harmonious societal relations
• Provision of corrective and recreative services, and socio-
legal aid
• Opportunities for social progress and development
• Develop an environment for the growth and development of
people
• Change the social system for social development
These objectives give an idea that every case undertaken by the
social worker is with the above-mentioned motives. These objec-
tives tend to bring in improved changes in an individual life which shall
consequently improve society as a whole. It not only means to re-
solve conflicts but also tries to establish a society where people live
with harmony and peace. Durgaube (2020) also acknowledges the
importance of harmony when he describes social work as a design
that brings forth autonomous ideas and inspires the evolution of good
human relations, resulting in adjustments with the family and neighbor-
hood.
Historical Development
The concept of social casework is as old as charity and humani-
tarianism. The queen of England was first to enact the Elizabethan
Poor Law in 1601 (Abell, 2010) for charity purposes. Chronologi-
cally, social casework focused on finding solutions to the problems
individuals face, and it is said to have started around 1820. Gradu-
ally the work related to welfare and aid continued in some form or
another. But the early initiation was seen with the establishment of
AICP (Dassi, 2010) in 1843. It was an organization named, Asso-
ciation for Improving Conditions of Poor working in the United States
that counsel and aid the poor to become self-sustaining.
Then in 1877 established American Charity Organization Soci-
ety, which had volunteer as “Friendly Visitors” (Mathew, 1992) who
10 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

find needy people and help them with their survival. The work of
social casework as friendly visitors was casually done, where people
visit people in need as a friendly visitor and “techniques used by them
consisted of personal attributes such as sympathy, tact, patience, and
wise advice” (Thomas, 2010, p.65). Primarily all the workers work-
ing as friendly visitors were women. They try providing support in a
way that the person in the problem does not consider them to be an
outsider. They proceed in their work by building a strong and faithful
relationship with the people. In 1898, the New York School, the first
school for social work established. This indicates social work has
gathered relevant skills and knowledge to set up as an institution (Mehta,
2010). In 1899, the school of social work was opened in Amsterdam.
In a few years, as health issues emerged as the prime factor of
misery among people, the role of medical faculty as social workers
got significant. Thus, Social case works began to be seen as profes-
sional work related to a medical facility which was the myopic view of
it. It took professional form in the early 20th Century. Another school
opened in 1904, in New York. In 1905, an individual study was
implemented for the first time in Boston, under the initiative of Dr.
Cabot. Thereafter, in 1909, Chicago saw the opening of the first
clinic on child guidance (Dan, 2013). Between 1914-1917 for the
first time the word “work with the case” was heard at the National
Conference in the USA (Malathi, 2010). For this purpose, training
was also imparted to those working with individual cases related to
social work. This was also the time of World War I and the world
was encountering an unprecedented event. This was the time when
Richmond engrossed in social works first developed the concept of
social work as the professional methodology and present two of her
famous research in subsequent years in the form of books namely,
‘social Diagnosis’ (1917) & ‘What is Social Case Work?’ (1922).
She mentioned the various measures that can be applied by the social
caseworkers for the better functioning of society.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 11

The impact of world war I made an unseen impact on the lives of

people around the world. During this time psychiatry emerged as an
effective tool to cope up with terrible situations and consequently the
psychiatric and medical practitioners got famous as ‘caseworkers’.
During that time the social caseworkers started adopting psychoana-
lytical viewpoints to understand client issues. Psychological researchers
such as Sigmund Frued (1920) gain prominence for his work ‘Psy-
choanalytical theory of personality development’ (Sibi, 2020). Con-
cepts of psychology seemed to be useful in social casework and the
Freudian model made a huge impact. Even it acted as a base on
which further psychological models for subsequent researchers were
based on.
Then in the early 1930s, economic depression broke out and it
gave rise to another important factor to be considered for anguish
among individuals. It restructured the sociological component and
social worker's problem-solving methodology. It also made attempts
on the part of the government to provide economical relief programs
for the people. Therefore, caseworkers also started focusing on eco-
nomic factors while dealing with clients.
Then the world had to face World War II in the 1940s that en-
larged the economic and financial crisis. The time extended the op-
portunity for many professional social workers to get into the field for
social betterment. Due to its impact, social work practice began in
private. The entire world was suffering from psychological issues and
for public social service agencies, it was not possible to resolve issues
at such a large number efficiently. This was also the time when
Maslow's (1943) gave the ‘theory of need hierarchy’ that helped the
social workers to understand people better.
From 1950 through 1960 the emphasis was by and large on
resettlement, revaluation, and up-gradation for social workers. (Dassi,
2010). New methods were adopted in casework and it stressed
more on research development as more of the new techniques of
helping and resolving different issues begin to develop. In countries
like Nigeria social casework was recognized late and was slow in the
12 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

application. On 17October 1975 Nigeria Association of Social Work-

ers was established (Shehu, 2012).
The functions of social work and workers in contemporary soci-
ety have changed throughout the 21st century. Major social changes
that occurred have been the reason. Demographic changes like the
low birth rate in European countries which means that there will be a
dearth of adults to look after elderly people are one of such problems
to mention. There have been changes in the family model. Social
work is now prioritized based on the impact of the problem
(Waterhouse, 2005) and how these problems can affect humans in
long run.
India and Social Casework
Social casework had always been there for ages. In ancient
times it was there in the form of charity and helping the needy. As time
changed the concept also evolved to match the contemporary re-
quirements. Every religion of the world always taught people about
serving the helpless and the deprived ones as their dharma. In recent
times the concept evolved into a profession where people with the
motive of serving others come forward to study and practice social
services in a scientific manner to reach out and serve the underprivi-
leged better.
The seeds of human development have served since the origin of
Indian society. During the very first Vedic era charities were consid-
ered as the prime feature of morality. Interestingly during the early
Vedic era women were also given equal positions. The ashram sys-
tems of ancient times assign duties associated with relationships for
adding discipline in human life. Buddhism finds its relativism in social
work principles including peace, dignity, right to livelihood. The an-
cient Holy scriptures of India mentioned political institutions as ex-
amples of scientific governance. The issue of morality and ethics is
well taught in the stories of Panchtantra which includes love and pro-
tection to animals too along with human beings.
The very first form of organized social work came into existence
in the year 1905 when Gopal Krishna Gokhale established ‘Servants
 Introduction to Social Case Work 13

of Indian society’. And several other social reformers also worked

hard to implement various social reforms that were for the benefit of
humanity. In 1911, the Social Service League was established by
N.M. Joshi, where volunteers were trained to give social service to
people. In academics, the practice of casework as a course started in
the year 1946 (Mehta, 2010). Reformers like Ishwar Chandra,
Mahadev Govind Ranade, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ramakrishna
Bhandarkar, and others by the time created an environment that led
Britishers to implement legislations based on the social reforms made
by these reformers.
Then India got Independence in 1947, and in Independent
India, social works got a wider area for its operation. It brings in
changed ideologies, ideas, and philosophies. Initiatives in the field of
tribal welfare, labor welfare, rural development, health sector, child
welfare, youth welfare, human resource development (Pandey et al,
2010) have been taken continuously. The welfare department by the
government has been set up in each field to monitor the changes and
development and to provide support wherever is needed for the bet-
ter development of its citizen.
1.2 CONCEPTS OF ADJUSTMENT AND MALADJUST-
MENT
The intent of social casework is maintaining a balance between
the person and the surroundings. In other words, it means to make
people adjust to the environment to carry out societal operations. If
there is mal-adjustment between the two, that is the environment and
people then the problems may get multiplied and others shall too have
to face the consequences of such problems. Notice the meaning of
the concepts as explained below.
The adjustment refers to the balance one needs to maintain be-
tween his conflicting needs which is the part of an individual’s behav-
ior. It is also about balancing the needs that cannot be fulfilled be-
cause of the obstacles in the environment. Adjustment is a process by
which a living organism maintains a balance between the needs and
the circumstances (Yadav, 2018). Humans daily adjust to the envi-
ronment that surrounds them. Adjustment maintains an equilibrium
between the person and the surrounding environment.
14 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

When a person faces issues while adjusting to its surrounding,

problems begin to arise. Social caseworkers help people to better
adjust to the surroundings so that it shall not hinder their development
process. Otherwise giving oneself upon the problems will only create
difficulty in an individual’s future growth. This adjustment does not
mean only physical adjustment but also mental, emotional, and situ-
ational adjustment as required by the person.
On the other hand, mal-adjustment refers to the fact that an indi-
vidual is not able to satisfy all his social needs. This in turn creates an
imbalance between the individual and the society. Anxiety, addiction,
lower rates of achievement are some examples of mal-adjustment.
Few reasons behind mal-adjustment are unhealthy environment at
home, deep-rooted mal-adjustment due to heredity, not getting proper
guidance, missing facility (Mohinuddin, 2019). Due to mal-adjust-
ment, the person finds it difficult to concentrate on other important
works. For example, when an individual faces problem in married
life, it also affects their work-life and social life. It consequently un-
balances the other chapters of life. Thus, it is of paramount impor-
tance to resolve issues about any aspect of life to live satisfactorily.
Thus, it can be said that both adjustment and maladjustment di-
rectly affect society and in turn social casework. A better-adjusted
environment for individuals is the result of better social casework.
The effectiveness of the methods applied by social caseworkers to
lessen the chaos from the life of the people directly affects the effi-
ciency of people in their social and professional life. The happy indi-
viduals tend to make people around them happy too. So for a better
and enduring society happiness of everyone can be ensured by mak-
ing them well adjusted with their surroundings.
1.3 INTRODUCTION OF CASEWORK AS A METHOD
OF SOCIAL WORK AND RELATED CONCEPTS
Before understanding the notion of casework as a method of
social work, it is required to first know about social work. Also,
insight into the concepts related to social work is significant to de-
velop a proper grip over the subject. In this section, the various con-
 Introduction to Social Case Work 15

cepts are recognized and explained briefly. These concepts shall help
in interpreting the meaning of social work and social casework accu-
rately.
Social Work
Social work is working with and for people. Today people want
empathy rather than sympathy. It is like they can deal with their prob-
lems themselves, but they want others to understand that it will take
them some time to cope up with the situation. Social work in a way
helps people in reality by understanding the problem systematically
and scientifically (Misra,1994) which makes people tackle their prob-
lems efficiently. In social work, the goal is not to help people but to
empower them, to make the people self-reliant, self-dependent hav-
ing self-dignity and self-respect.
Social work believes that all individuals are talented, worthy, ca-
pable, and equal. The benefits of social work are durable and for the
long term which makes people self-reliant in life whereas the term,
social service is different from it, which has short-term implications.
Thus, one must not get confused between the two-term. Social ser-
vice is to work for the people but social work is to work with the
people. Social service makes the beneficiaries dependent on the help
provided whereas social work makes them independent and self-sus-
taining to build their life on their terms.
Social work includes two factors in general, these are
• Resources are to be used in a proper way
• For the needy, the help provided should be in a systematic,
scientific, and orderly manner
For social workers, the nature of social work is both science and
an art as it requires proper knowledge as well as social workers must
be capable enough to work with people in all situations. Both the
concepts are explained below in details
Social work as science:
In social work knowledge, skill, talent is important. Social work
as science means it is an accumulation of systematic knowledge.
16 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Knowledge is the goal, ultimate destination, and end production. For

gaining more knowledge there is a system or way to attain knowledge
in an orderly and systematic way. Social work is a science also be-
cause of the fact that there is a curriculum to be followed to become a
social worker. The goal of science is enlightenment. If you want to
know the society, the people, the problems there is a pre-defined
manner to know them.
Social work as an art:
In terms of practice, social work is an art, as a person should
have skills like how to educate others, talk, establish a relationship,
deal with different kinds of people. Different people such as children,
women, the elderly, physically and mentally challenged.
After learning about nature, look into the characteristics of social
work that changes the basic form of aid into a social activity. The
fundamental characteristics of social work are as follows
• Social work is a helping activity means it focuses on problem-
solving. When there is a problem you have to help and prob-
lems have to be effectively solved or removed by a social
worker.
• Social work is a healing activity. When there is a problem
such as personal, psychological, social, or economic the so-
cial worker heals/solves the problems to bring the person in a
better physical and emotional state.
• Social work is a social activity. It means not to expect any-
thing in return as it is not a business activity, it only provides
service and helps others. It is selfless service. It advocates
and demands social service to humanity and mankind. The
main motto of social work is to promote social activity through
various institutions.
• Social work is a liaison activity. Liaison means linking or bridg-
ing activity as it does not work inside the four walls but go out
in the public. It establishes a relationship with the community.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 17

A social worker has a good link /binding between society and

agencies.
• The social worker has good co-ordination with society and
knows the surroundings well.
• Social Worker must be able to travel to reach out to the maxi-
mum possible people out to bring efficiency to their work.
Social Work Methods
There are six methods of social work. The first three methods
are primary, fundamental, or basic methods and the other three are
secondary, auxiliary, or indirect methods.
Primary methods as suggested by Thomas (2017) are as follows
1. Social case work: It is a method of social work, which is
concerned with the adjustment and the development of the individual
towards a more satisfying human relation (IGNOU, 2015).
2. Social group work: Konapka (1963 as cited in Thomas, 2017)
defines social group work as a method of social work that helps indi-
viduals to enhance their social functioning through purposeful group
experience and to cope more effectively with their personal, group, or
community problems.
3. Community organization: It is a method of social work through
which efforts are taken in a direction to meet the community needs by
the arrangement of human and material resources of the community.
Secondary methods as explained by Nayak (2002) are stated
below
1. Social work research: It refers to the systematic and critical
inquiry of the questions encountered by social work professionals in
the field of application of social works.
2. Social welfare administration: It refers to a process through
which social policy is transformed into social service. It includes all
the activities from recruitment of the personnel to delivery of services
to the needy.
18 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

3. Social action: It is the method that is used to introduce desir-

able changes in the defective system to make sure social progress.
Indirect methods are there because services sometimes are not
provided directly to people. All six methods are inter-dependent and
inter-related. Problems can be the same but the methods used are
different for different individuals.
From the section above, it is evident that social casework is a
primary method of social works where the direct link between a client
and a social caseworker is developed to resolve issues of the client.
Social casework as a method intends to make long term adjustments
between the client and their issues so that it shall in future do not
create unnecessary ruckus in their life. Instead of making temporary
arrangements, it tends to emphasize permanent solutions that would
help in the growth and development of the client.
Social work and social casework intend to help people. Definite
knowledge and skills are to be acquired for the effective and efficient
performance of the caseworkers which mainly include two compo-
nents of the education process.
• Course Work: Social work is a knowledge base profession
and course work includes whatever one studies in class, through
the prescribed syllabus, different papers, regular instructions
in the classroom. One gets the concrete base through the li-
brary, referring to books, journals, magazines which helps
workers to gain insight into the practicality of real-world hap-
penings.
• Field Work: It is an essential component of social work as it is
a skill-based profession. In fieldwork, students are placed in
different agencies where they practice by learning and doing
work. Littrel (1980 as cited in Henry et al 2017) explains that
fieldwork practice helps us to sharpen and develop skills that
help to deal effectively and efficiently with our clients to help
solve their various problems.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 19

Social workers to reach the people successfully works at three

levels (Misra, 1994 as cited in Nayak, 2002)
• Promotive level: The main goal of social work is the promo-
tion or development of the intellectual, physical, spiritual, and
social areas of people. The objective is the development,
empowerment and well being of the people. At this level, the
capabilities of the people are enhanced to make them able to
deal with their situations and problems efficiently. It will make
people self-sufficient when it will come to dealing with their
life issues. For example, at colleges, students are taught about
how they need to work when they will join any organization
after their studies, how they should go for the interview for
which the colleges even organize special personality, devel-
opment classes. This falls under the promotive level as here
college is enhancing student’s mindset to deal with profes-
sional situations.
• Preventive level: Social workers also work on a particular
problem. Most of the human problems are preventive. For
example, family, occupational, interpersonal, economical prob-
lems. The intention of social work is how to prevent the prob-
lem. It is a widely accepted fact that prevention is better than
cure and one ounce of prevention is equal to tones of cure.
Thus, at this level social workers try the solutions that would
help in preventing the problem to occur. For example, when
the winter season is about to start parents do not provide ice-
creams or other cold items to their kids to prevent the health
issues that could arise because of it. This is a form of preven-
tive measure to keep our health in good condition.
• Curative or therapeutic level: Coming at this level means the
problem is already there in life and there is an urgent need for
a solution. The work of a social caseworker is now treat-
ment. For example, Marriage problems, economic problems,
family problems. The task is to identify the problems and
provide solutions. Identification is done through the investi-
20 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

gation. For example, a fight between couples could lead them

to the situation of divorce. In such a case, there is an urgent
need for a counselor who could help the couple with their
problem so that it could not stretch further.
Out of the three levels, the first level is most important i.e. pro-
motive level, but in India, it is the opposite. More importance is given
to the curative level than promotive and preventive levels. For ex-
ample, here people give less importance to personal hygiene and a
clean environment, devastating the environment without giving impor-
tance to afforestation, and then when the problem will surface people
tend to pay the heavy cost of their previous carelessness. As we can
see during Diwali the atmosphere in the North of India, especially
around Delhi and neighboring states, the air quality index gets worse
due to the man generated issues be it burning stubble burning, over-
pollution, traffic, and others.
Social Casework as a Method of Social Work
Social casework is one of the primary and oldest methods of
social works. Social casework is the first method used for social
work. The objective of social casework is social welfare with a fun-
damental focus on the individual. Social caseworkers are to work
with individual and their families. It is called casework because here
the work done is case by case. The case means an individual who
requires help. Individualized service welfare is known as social case-
work. Every individual is unique therefore problems are also different
for every individual and even if the problem is the same for two indi-
viduals, a personalized solution has to be provided in each case. Thus
the objective of social casework is to provide individual social wel-
fare services.
Social casework in the context of tradition was always been there
in some form or other. Helping the needy and providing them with the
necessary support for their better well-being is part of every religion.
Social work as a profession was started in the West and in the Indian
context, it took professional form and academic subject in 1936 through
Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work, now known as
Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS).
 Introduction to Social Case Work 21

In the global context, in July 2001, the International Association

Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and International Federation of
Social Workers (IFSW) adopted that social work is a profession that
promotes social change, problem-solving in human relationships, em-
powerment, and liberation of people to enhance well-being as an in-
ternational definition of social work.
Related Concepts
Social Service
Social service is working for the people. Social service can
also be called welfare service, many public or private agencies pro-
vide services with the motive to aid disadvantaged, distressed, or vul-
nerable persons or groups (Pinker, 2020). The way to work with
them is not systematic. It is always showing sympathy to others like
providing help to helpless people. The need for social service is al-
ways good but there are some problems. Like
• The resources are to be distributed to deserving people but,
undeserving people may get the benefits.
• Duplication of services is more. They are not organized prop-
erly and so the services may be repeatedly given to the same
person.
• Resources are not plenty or enough. One has to identify who
is the real poor and then provide service to them. Otherwise,
it will lead to creating lethargy among undeserving people.
India has a long tradition of social service. The main aim of
social service is to help the helpless. Social service is working for
people, for their problems out of sympathy. In social service, there is
no need for a systematic investigation, but showing sympathy, and
having feelings for others is important. But there are disadvantages of
social services also such as there is no personal involvement, and the
needy are considered hopeless and helpless. It is a more spontane-
ous act rather than a planned activity which leads to dependency.
Social service is serving the poor, physically challenged, elderly be-
longing to all religious backgrounds. Workers do not expect active
participation but work on behalf of others.
22 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Social Policy
Social policy is the action adopted or proposed by the State. It
is a document intended for future [Link] a broader per-
spective, it is correct to say social policy addresses the problems
related to urbanization, education, health, and the environment along
with the categories of society which include workers, elders, children,
and the disabled (Aravacik, 2018). It is not mandatory, but recom-
mendatory. It depends on the commitment of the government to real-
ize these visions. People need the policy to guide them in the way
they should go to. Different types of policies help different kinds of
people like mental health policy, women policy, policy for the elderly,
housing policy, policy for physically challenged.
Though the meaning of social policy is changed from time to time.
Primarily it was concerned with measures taken by the Government
to protect workers. Then, it changed to the movement of the social
class against their struggles. Lately, the term can be understood as the
effort that ensures minimum opportunities and standard of living for
the people.
Social Legislation
The legislation is to bring peace, harmony, progress, and balance
to society. This implementation depends on the commitment of the
Government, allocation of funds, provision of infrastructure, and
awareness of people. Society is composed of different types of people
like few with power and few without it. Once legislation is bought, all
have to follow it equally irrespective of any difference therefore, it
tends to bring equality in the society, or otherwise, the law will punish,
penalize, and imprison the defaulters. Defaulters are the one who fails
to follow the law. In the words of Professor Gangrade (1978), social
legislation is a dynamic process of remedies by changing the fallacious
course of actions or by choosing among the actions that are demon-
strated to be right.
Various laws have been made on different aspects like the Dowry
Prohibition Act, Marriage Act, Mental Health Act, Factories Act 1948
are a few to mention. For society to move ahead acceptably, it needs
 Introduction to Social Case Work 23

social legislation implemented in words and spirit. As this is the gen-

eral tendency of human beings that to get ahead of others, they do not
bother to harm others coming in their way. Therefore, in a society,
there must be some regulations that shall guide and restrict people to
take any action that could harm others.
Social Welfare
Social welfare is the well-being of all. In a limited sense, it refers
to the welfare of weaker sections of society. Social welfare is the
product and the instrument of man’s inherent dependence for his sur-
vival and his well-being on the help of other people (Wickenden, 2007).
For example, the welfare of the women and children, disabled, sched-
uled caste and tribes, minorities all come under the category of social
welfare. Social welfare is the upbringing of the downtrodden,
marginalized, and vulnerable. Social welfare provides welfare ser-
vices to those people who cannot look after themselves. The weaker
section is taken care especially as they are not equal to others. They
are pushed differently to reach the mainstream.
Social welfare depends upon two pillars, first is the principles of
human rights that include protecting and promoting human rights. In a
society, everyone should be respected. Human rights state that every
human being should live in coexistence. The second pillar is social
justice for all. Those who are not able to lead a satisfactory life need
support and help. So Government from time to time keep bringing
such policies that would help everyone to become equal in all aspect
without bothering about orthodox old traditional norms.
Social Justice
Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and com-
passionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth however, it is
necessary to attach some important qualifiers to this statement. Quali-
fiers such as justice especially to weaker and marginalized sections of
the society, because these people are not equal. They are powerless.
These people are differentiated because of their caste, socio-eco-
nomic status, and [Link] means equal to equal and unequal to
24 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

unequal, a better society where all people can live in harmony. In

today’s time, it tends to protect the rights enjoyed by an individual. A
society is composed of different types of people like rich and poor,
powerful and weak, justice is providing a just situation where every-
one is treated equally neglecting the fact of their differences. Thus, it
is mainly to provide support to those who are needy and powerless.
Clifford and Burke ( 2009 as cited in Nayak, 2012) follow an expan-
sive view of social justice compatible with its use in social work. So-
cial justice, like justice, has the components of
• Fair distribution of goods and services to people based on
equal opportunity.
• Limitation of institutional discrimination and oppression.
• All people are equally free to use opportunities without dis-
crimination.
• Equality is the end position, with goods and services shared
fairly between individuals and groups.
Social Assistance
Assistance is help and social assistance is helpful for those people
who cannot make a living on their own. For example, orphans, the
elderly, widows, persons with disabilities, etc. It is a non-contribu-
tory benefit. Social assistance is mainly given to those people who
don’t have physical stamina, bank balance, or proper conditions to
earn their living for example elderly people after the age of 60 years,
poor, widow. Assistance provided by social workers is not only to
provide help but the motive is to make the community able to use their
resources intelligently on their own. More than relief it rests on re-
establishment.
Singh (2010) defines social assistance as a service provided to
those considered eligible by satisfying certain criteria as set by soci-
ety. To those people help is provided to satisfy their basic needs. It is
generally provided in the form of cash or material benefits that would
help the needy to meet the basic requirement of living standard, that
would improve their living, and shall help in social development.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 25

Social Insurance
It is a contributory benefit. Here the person has to pay partial
payment or premium. The benefits are provided only to those people
who pay a certain amount of contribution (Nayak, 2002). For ex-
ample, life insurance in case of calamities, where a person insured
gets [Link] is like securing the life of the family by contribut-
ing in the form of insurance. So through social insurance, life is se-
cured throughthe contributory payments made by the individual.
Under social assistance, no premium or contribution is made,
direct help is provided by the [Link] to the needy people
likean orphan, destitute, elderly, physically and mentally challenged.
Whereas under social insurance a contributory initiative is taken from
the side of the State as well as an individual. The contributions made
by an individual are nominal in front of the assistance that it may get in
the time of contingencies. It could be understood in a sense that by
buying health insurance of a thousand rupees, a person is getting back
the assistance of a lakh rupee. Similarly, social insurance also works.
Social Development
The main intention of development is to create a better society
where there is the least difference between people like rich-poor,
healthy-sick. All people should live in harmony and the gaps should
be less. People should enjoy all kinds of rights to live. So there
should a society which is free from problems and evils. Social devel-
opment is a very vague term as it comprises a wide range of param-
eters that tends to bring all on the same line socially. Unlike economic
development which is very objective, sharp, precise, and measurable,
social development is mostly theoretical and subjective hence, diffi-
cult to measure. Social development tends to provide better health,
education, infrastructure. In short, it means social welfare for all indi-
viduals.
Social development tries to build on the capabilities and abilities
of people in a society, not only for their well-being but also for the
larger good of the society as a whole. It helps to refine their social,
26 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

intellectual, moral, physical, and emotional wellbeing. Thus, it can be

concluded that social development helps people to improve in every
aspect of their life.
1.4 KEY COMPONENTS OF SOCIAL CASEWORK
The components here describe the nucleus of social casework
around which the working of the social workers revolves. It means
that when any issue or conflict arises it go around the four elements
that are common to every situation. These elements are person, prob-
lem, place, and process. Every issue arising must include a person
who is the client, a problem about the client, a place where the social
caseworker and a client will meet to sort out the issues, and a due
process through which the social caseworker shall try to overcome
the problem of the client. Let’s check the component in details as
explained below
Person
A person is an individual who requires help, also called a client.
A person may be defined as male, female, youth, child, rich, or poor.
Individuals are different and so their problems and the environment in
which the problem arises. Environmental factors in which the prob-
lem is arising can be classified as family environment, school environ-
ment, or social environment. Every issue that arises is attached to the
environmental characteristics in which they are arising.
Individuals are different and can be segregated on different
grounds such as age like a child, youth, or adolescent. Based on sex
like male or female. Male and female may face entirely different kind
of problems for example male faces problems such as lack of cour-
age, not taking the risk, aggressiveness, anger, doubtful nature whereas
females may face entirely different problems like more concern for
other people, love, care, sympathy, acceptance, obedience. These
qualities of women may pose problems many a time. Based on occu-
pation people can be either employed or unemployed. People may
feel anxiety, pressure either in their job or if they are unemployed they
may again have such feelings.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 27

Dassi (2020), has identified the categories of clients that come to

social caseworkers. They can be bifurcated as
• One who asks for proper help for their self like a person
getting anxiety attacks
• One who takes help for someone else like a mother taking
help for her depressed son
• One who blocks social activities and advancements of an-
other person like husband mistreating his wife and not letting
her socialize
• One who uses others to attain improper goals like co-worker
misguiding his colleague to get the project to impress the boss
• One who seeks or use others to achieve their motives like the
boss making subordinate do all works related to project to
get acclamation
Thus, proper information about the type of client gives the social
caseworker an advantage in how to deal with them and solve their
issues. As for all the clients mentioned above the techniques to be
used by the caseworker shall be different for every case.
Problem
The problem arises from some obstacle, accumulation of frustra-
tions or maladjustments, and sometimes all of these together. Ameri-
can Heritage Dictionary (2020) defines it as a matter, person, or situ-
ation that is hard to understand or deal with. It threatens or attacks
the adequacy of the person, their living situation, its effectiveness, and
the effectiveness of his efforts to deal with it. Problems, by and large,
begin to arise when there is a discrepancy between the actual and
expected situation. When people do not find situations according to
their wish difficulties begin to arise.
Every individual may have many issues like economic, adjust-
ment, psychological, interpersonal problems. They face problems in
both their personal as well as professional life. The problems are part
of life and every problem has a solution. The problems in any part of
28 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

human life tend to have a multipliers effect which means out of one
problem simultaneously many issues tend to surface. This not only
affects the person but also those around them. Any problem which a
person encounters has both an objective as well as a subjective sig-
nificance. It tends to affect the social operations of a person. The
social caseworker before taking the project in hand needs to confirm
what the client wants from the issue or what is the desirable state that
has to be reached.
Place
The place is a social service agency or a department of a human
welfare agency. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it is set-up to deal
not with social problems at large but also with the problems of an
individual who is experiencing such problems while managing their
own lives. Its purpose is to help individuals with a particular social
handicap that hamper good personal or family life and also people
with the problems created by faulty person-to-person, person-to-
group, or person-to-situation relationships.
A person with a problem comes for help to this particular place
known as a social agency. The social worker tends to provide them
with basically two kinds of help that can be differentiated as
• Material help: Like provide a wheelchair, food, shelter, schol-
arships that can fulfill the immediate need of the client
• Non Material help: Like education, counseling, advice, aware-
ness, behavioral advice that intend to solve the long term needs
of the client
The social work agency that provides material and non-material
help is called a social casework agency. Social agencies are of two
types public agency and private agency. Public agencies are also
called government agencies that are managed by the state or central
government. A private agency is a non-governmental agency or busi-
ness-oriented company managed by professional social workers or
other individuals.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 29

Process
The process of social casework denotes its center of attention
and the individual aspect. It is a progressive transaction between the
professional helper that is the caseworker and the client. It consists of
a series of problem-solving operations carried on within a meaningful
relationship. A series of progressive steps are well defined in advance
to achieve the goal. The goal means individual welfare, which is ulti-
mate and final. The process is in a successive stage that means mov-
ing ahead step by step with no hurry to reach the final as it is the
process that consists of humans thus requires time and patience.
There are six steps involved in the process which are intake,
social study, or investigation, social diagnosis, social treatment or so-
cial management, termination or closing of the case, and then follow
up. The process begins with accepting the client, once the client’s
case is accepted investigation is made regarding recognizing the facts
due to which the problem has arisen. The next step is a social diagno-
sis where the suitable solutions are reviewed and accepted to over-
come the conflict that arose. Next is effectively carrying the treatment
to achieve the desired results. Once the desired results are achieved
the relationship between the client and the caseworker is terminated
but follow-up with the client is maintained to ensure the personal and
social development of the client. These steps are discussed in detail in
the upcoming sections.
1.5 PURPOSE, VALUE, AND ASSUMPTIONS OF SO-
CIAL CASEWORK
Before getting into the details of social casework let us first
understand the purpose, values. Philosophical and basic assumptions
of the social casework. The mentioned sections explain these con-
cepts briefly
Purpose
The purpose of social casework is to help clients with solutions
to their issues that have permanency and a more satisfying experi-
ence. To attain this goal, all the necessary changes are made and
30 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

support is provided to the person in need which in turn improves the

situation. All the efforts are aimed at making the individual adjust
better to social relationships and develop his personality. Social case-
work also aims to make an individual self-reliant so that for the same
issue he can make necessary changes to his lifestyle in the future
(Kumar, 2010). This is the only difference that one can see while they
take help from a social caseworker instead of someone else.
Like when a problem occurs in anybody’s life they first approach
family and friend but when they could not find the proper solution to
their problems they eventually come to a social caseworker who not
only suggest ways to prevent the problems but also provide guidance
through which a problem may not occur in future as well. For ex-
ample, when a person wants to quit smoking, he first consults his
family and friend about how he can quit it, but the chemical reactions
taking place in the brain of the person forces him to smoke again and
again. In such problems, a social caseworker comes in with the proven
psychological and scientific solution following which a person can quit
smoking within a period of time.
Here, we need to understand that only solving problem is not
enough. Proper follow-up or counseling is a must to ensure that a
person does not repeat any activity that can bring in the problem again
in their life. So in the above example, after a person quit smoking, the
caseworker counsel him at regular interval to ensure the addiction
does not trigger again.
Value
Values depend on moral education and being educated about the
correct social casework practices to attain the goals. The moral con-
dition of humans is a major factor. Social work values focus on three
areas in general that are valued for people, values for social work in
society, and values of professional behavior (Dubois and Miley, 1992).
To take some viewpoint from Freud, it can be said that morality
has been there within every human being for ages but social work as a
profession came into existence much later (Gray and Webb, 2010).
To sum up, the core of most of the codes rests on the values of the
following
 Introduction to Social Case Work 31

• Self-determination of client and service user

• Social justice
• Professional integrity or the notion of virtue ethics
Values hold importance because, despite the methods and well-
defined procedures, a social worker must possess a core ideology,
based on which the worker carries out their social service. In other
words, it can be said that values are elemental norms and favored
behavior samples, shared by members of a society or a group, which
aim at consolidating and directing the arranged activities of the mem-
bers (Jagadish, 2020). The definition explains that values guide our
random behavior and channelize them into more favored and accepted
conduct as accepted by a civilized society.
Basic Assumptions of Social Casework
Conventional social work is based on philosophical assumptions
that take into consideration ethical values and practices that help in
individual betterment and welfare of the society (Stefaroi, 2016). This
ritual mentions that every community has unconditioned responsibility
for the person in distress and need. Anytime, at any place helping a
person in need is considered a universal value and one of the main
objectives of social work. The main aim of social casework is to
establish a balanced relationship between the individual and the soci-
ety the person lives in.
Few philosophical assumptions (Mathew, 1991) can be pointed
as
• Each human being is to be considered as someone with worth
and respect
• Every person is interdependent and finds solace in social
groups
• There are common needs for every person but that does not
affect their individuality
32 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Whereas basic assumptions are quite different from the philo-

sophical assumptions in a sense that it tends to give more scientific
and systematic viewpoint to social casework. The basic assumptions
of social casework are as follows(Hamilton, 1940)
• Individuals and society are complementary and interdepen-
dent with each other
• There are various forces operative in society. These forces
influence human behavior and attitudes
• Every problem is not psychological. Many problems relating
to social casework are interpersonal. These problems in-
volve more than one individual
• During the process of social casework, conscious and con-
trolled relations are established between the social worker
and his client These relations are oriented towards achieving
the aims of treatment
• During the process of social casework, the worker acquaints
the client with his internal capacities to enable him in solving
the problem. Therefore, the energy and capacity of the client
are diverted towards the solution of a problem
• A social caseworker is oriented towards the principle of so-
cial justice. Social justice provides everyone equal rights to
prowess. Therefore, social casework does not believe in the
survival of the fittest. In other words, social casework is based
on the assumption of human welfare. It provides help to ev-
ery needy and disabled person.
• Its ultimate aim is to establish a harmonious relationship be-
tween the client and the society to which he belongs
1.6 PRINCIPLES OF THE CASEWORK
Social casework is a part of the social work profession. There
are distinct principles of social casework that are proposed by Felix
Biestek (Biestek, 1957) to maintain cross-culture practice with
Thirukural. Thirukural is a sanctified Tamil language used for the same
 Introduction to Social Case Work 33

purpose. These principles give a solid base to social caseworkers

which they need to keep in mind always while dealing with a client.
Give clients due importance through considering these principles im-
portant is the main purpose of formulating these principles. The prin-
ciples are explained briefly below
Individualization
Here the principle states that a caseworker should relate to and
help each person seeking help. As all individuals have unique issues.
Recognition and subsequent action concerning the unique difference
of each individual (Douglas, 1976) are what this principle talks about.
Here individuals are treated as a person having characteristic differ-
ences. In this regard, it is also important to observe each client dis-
tinctly, so that every particular need of that individual can be met.
From the term individualization itself, it can be understood that
the principle talks about being person-centric. The client has his own
identity and characteristics that shall be unique. Thus social case-
worker has to respect the individual factor of the client and consider it
important while resolving the issue.
Acceptance
This principle emphasizes the fact that recognizing a person’s
problem with a positive perspective is very necessary. In the act of
helping a relationship pass through the issues, where acceptance be-
comes a fundamental element. Basic respect and love for people
without considering his weakness (Friedlander, 1958) is crucial. Ac-
ceptance of the client’s good and bad qualities, strength along with his
weakness is necessary.
Acceptance means accepting the client in literal terms with all of
the good and bad habits. Because, if the social caseworker will be
judgmental in their attitude towards the client, there will also be bias in
understanding the client completely. Thus, the social caseworker needs
to keep aside all of his biases and look at the client as the client look
at himself.
34 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Non-Judgmental Attitude
For any social caseworker, it is very necessary not to incline on
either side. Caseworkers should always be impartial just like an even
fixed scale which is considered to be a weapon of the wise. In the
words of Mathew (2010), the caseworker must not condemn the
client for their problem, also a worker must not hold them responsible
for their miseries. The workers must only observe the client and the
problems as told by them putting away their preconceived notions or
theories about the situation, problem, or the client.
By adopting the non-judgmental attitude the social caseworkers
can maintain non-subjective opinions about the client. It means that
there is nothing observed by the social caseworkers that are based
upon the halo effect or stereotyping. Whatsoever the caseworker has
observed about the client is all based upon the information shared by
him. Thus the help provided will also be unaffected by any of the
social, mental, or emotional factors.
Participation
The participation of the client is a very important part of the pro-
cess. The client must share the current diagnosis of his issue and
situation. On the part of the worker, it is important to listen to it with
empathy. Communicating with empathy ensures the client’s active
participation in the process and it also encourages the client to im-
prove his current situation actively.
The active participation of both client and the worker speeds up
the process of the caseworker and the outcome is as effective as
expected by them. This ensures constant improvement in the situa-
tion. If the client in any form is hesitating to actively involved in the
process, then it is the work of the caseworker to recognize the rea-
sons for the same and work upon it to involve the client more in the
process. In the situation of disagreement or fear, initially, the case-
worker must make the client comfortable by developing a causal rela-
tionship which eventually turns out into a strong bonding.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 35

Relationship
The basis of any kind of help the client will obtain depends upon
the relationship created by the act of help. To work with the client
and assist him throughout it is necessary to build a relationship of trust
and express the feeling effectively. The social worker must form a
purposeful relationship. It means conscious focusing on the needs of
the group members and attempts to fulfill them (Konopka,1963). This
is required to change any behavior of the client that might be an ob-
struction in the way of helping him.
With the motive of establishing a meaningful relationship with the
client, the social workers tend to help them adjust to the maladjusted
situations. The workers must show all their interest in the client to
build up the faith between them and the client also feel more than
comfortable to share their inner emotions with the social casework-
ers. They must build a relationship making the client secured and
comfortable.
Effective Communication of Feeling
To express oneself properly and effectively better communica-
tion is required. If anyone can speak about his feeling or on any other
subject related to him in proper order and in a pleasant way, his opin-
ions shall be readily accepted. Communication is the process through
which the ideas and thoughts of one person reach another person.
Throughout ages, communication has served humankind and has helped
them to understand their fellow being and to sense the feeling of one-
ness.
The caseworker according to the problems conveyed by the cli-
ent, differentiates the manner of help as clients come with heightened
sensitivity. They come to the caseworker with the presumption that
caseworkers shall understand them in a way no one else is under-
standing. Thus, caseworkers should motivate the client to open up
effectively so that their issues can be solved in the best possible man-
ner.
36 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Client Self-Determination
The principle of democratic group self-determination (Treeker,
1955) means an individual must be encouraged to have the ability to
make their own decisions about the course and the betterment of their
life. Any individual can be socially responsible, emotionally adjusted,
and develop when he can make his own choice based upon wise
decisions. The principle of self-determination is the practical recogni-
tion of the rights and needs of the client to have freedom in making his
own choice and decision on the casework process. Social responsi-
bility, emotional adjustment, and personality development are pos-
sible only when the person exercises his freedom and choice and de-
cision.
But there is also a limitation to it as the decisions taken by the
client must be in a positive and constructive direction, otherwise, all
the efforts taken shall be of no use. The client who comes to the
social caseworker must be well prepared in advance to take hard
decisions if it is necessary to resolve the existing conflict and issues.
Confidentiality
Without the client's consent, no social caseworker has the right
to disclose any information related to the client. This includes the
identity of the client, the issue discussed verbally, any opinion regard-
ing the situation of the client or his records. (Sundaresan and
Nalini,2015). In literal terms, it could be understood as the act of
preserving the information that one has. In social casework also, the
client comes to a worker with some expectations and it is the utmost
duty of the worker to meet the required expectations of the client in
the best possible way.
There are some ethics to every profession and one such ethic is
confidentiality. The information or data shared in the professional
relationship must not be disclosed to the third party without the prior
knowledge of the client. This makes the profession unethical and the
issues get more complicated rather than be solved
 Introduction to Social Case Work 37

1.7 PROCESS IN CASEWORK: STUDY, ASSESSMENT,

INTERVENTION, TERMINATION, EVALUATION,
AND FOLLOW-UP
Study
Intake: The client in need of help comes to the agency for profes-
sional help through a caseworker. A relationship between these two
persons of unequal positions and power is developed. The case-
worker accepts the client as a person who is in a very stressful situa-
tion. He respects the client’s personality and helps to resolve the
problem. In other words, pick the client up from a stressful situation
and regain a personal and social balance that is satisfying and endur-
ing. There is an establishment of rapport between the caseworker
and client.
Social Study (Psycho-social study): In the course of studying the
client and the situation associated, the caseworker can make an initial
study of the client’s current, relevant past, and possible future modes
of adaptations related to normal living situations. It requires an analy-
sis of social, psychological, and biological determinants of the client’s
current situation. Obtaining data on these determinants, the case-
worker develops a hypothesis for understanding the client and the
situation. It may seek to include historical data on related past life
experiences and facts responsible. These are some methods of data
collection for study are questionnaire, observation, interview, and re-
cording.
Assessment
Social Diagnosis: It refers to the need for gaining knowledge of
the individual and the family situation by an interview into the history
and the present situation. An investigation is carried on to establish
facts of personality and the situation upon which a diagnosis is to be
made. The caseworker should make tentative assessments for the
clients, currently relevant and possible future modes of adaptation to
stressful situations and the related normal living situations. The case-
worker and the client consider possible adjustments or changes in the
38 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

client’s immediate physical and social world. In an on-going relation-

ship, diagnosis is continuously reformulated, as the caseworker and
the client engage in appropriate corrective action or treatment. These
developments in diagnosis may lead to modifications in the goals for
treatment and consequently in the means used for this purpose.
Types of diagnosis-
Dynamic diagnosis: It gives an understanding of the current prob-
lem of the client and the forces currently operating within the client,
within a social environment, and between the environment.
Clinical diagnosis: Under this, the caseworker attempts to clas-
sify the client by the nature of his sickness or problem.
Etiological diagnosis:It is concerned with the explanation of the
beginnings and life-history of the problem of the client, basically that
problem that lies in the client’s personality makeup or functioning.
Intervention
Intervention through treatment. Casework treatment is having dif-
ferent steps and techniques. Treatment is the main content of social
casework. The caseworker should plan the treatment thoroughly.
The treatment plan is different in different caseworkers according to
the change of the client, problem, situation. But every social case-
work is done through the same methodology.
Techniques in social casework treatment-
• Support: Here the social worker is giving total support to the
client to improve his weak personality. The social caseworker
will try to make a good and strong relationship with the client.
The client will be prepared to share the problems with the
caseworker. The client’s personality will be respected and
will be treated as a normal human being.
• Clarification: The social caseworker finds out the client’s per-
sonality, family background, personal history, family history,
etc from this technique. The caseworker will get enough in-
formation about the client’s childhood, lifestyle, and personal
 Introduction to Social Case Work 39

situation. The caseworker obtains the personal history of the

client to get clarity regarding the problem of the client.
• Insight: The caseworker tries to find out the actual cause of a
client’s problem. For example, in the case of a drug addict,
the caseworker should know the causes that led a person to
become a drug-addict. Here the caseworker goes deep into
the client’s mind and finds out the root cause of his problem.
It will be possible only with the help of the client and his family
members or other dear and near ones. Here the social worker
will give more confidence to his client. It is also a confidence
improving step.
• Identification: The social worker will identify the client’s total
personality and related problems. The social caseworker can
identify the client’s strengths and weaknesses so it will be easy
to help the client get rid of his problem. The treatment will
also be planned according to the client’s personality and make
further treatment plans based on it.
• Resource utilization: The caseworker should make use of all
resources available to improve the progress of the client some-
times the caseworker will use yoga and other meditation tech-
niques for the improvement of the client, if the client is unem-
ployed then helps him to get a loan to start a business. The
meaning is that the caseworker should make use of all the
resources available to them to improve the client’s present
situation. The caseworker must save clients to overcome
problems.
• Evaluation: After the completion of the above techniques, the
caseworker should evaluate the work with the client. For
that, the caseworker should record the work so that evalua-
tion can be made easy. During an evaluation, if the case-
worker finds that work is not satisfying further corrections are
made. The caseworker must evaluate every step of the case-
work process. Through this evaluation, it is easy to do a
better follow-up. Follow-up is very much essential in the so-
40 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

cial casework process. Through a better evaluation, the case-

worker can improve his abilities and correct his mistakes in
the future.
Termination
Termination means ending something. P.D Mishra (2010), de-
fines termination as a process in social casework where the agree-
ment stands ended which the agency and client have entered into.
There comes a situation where though the caseworker managed to
save the client from problems there is a chance that the deleted prob-
lems may arise again. So the caseworker should make the client’s
environment also suitable for personal growth. In such a case even
after termination few extra follow-up counseling is given to the client.
For example, in the case of a drug addict or an alcoholic, even
though the client stopped consuming drugs and drinks, the family mem-
bers shall not accept or believe that and may harass the client in some
way or another. To prevent this the social worker should give coun-
seling to the client’s family members also. The caseworker must do
different counseling sessions for family members. This makes a better
environment for the client to overcome the problems.
The client and social caseworker reach this stage by mutual un-
derstanding. Coming at this stage means now, the client is happy and
has moved ahead with satisfaction, forgiving and forgetting his past
bitter experiences. The client feels accomplished at this stage. Now
the client is in a state of mind where it can take responsibility for
himself and any situation arising in his life with confidence. The client
is now able to overcome the obstacle of life.
Evaluation
Evaluation is comparing the actuals with the standard. This pro-
cedure attaches value to the work done. In social casework, the
evaluation process gives weightage to the work done by the social
caseworker by analyzing the efficiency and effectiveness of the work
done. The complete process of evaluation is done in three phases
which begins with the evaluation of the casework process, then evalu-
ation of the progress made by the client, and then evaluation of the
caseworker.
 Introduction to Social Case Work 41

According to Mishra (2010), the task of evaluation is done for

three main purposes. Which are
• Letting caseworkers and agencies know about the effective-
ness of the measures taken by them
• Promotion of public relations
• Build up a case for raising funds
This evaluation is done in a periodic and timely manner which
helps in giving validation to the tests and researches developed by the
agency. As public acceptance at large and by big organizations is
important to prove the efforts taken by the agency are in the right
direction. The work of caseworkers is critically evaluated and they
are guided accordingly for future casework.
Follow up
The relationship between the client and the caseworker does not
end with the completion of the task. Rather they both get connected
for the long term. Follow-up is very much essential in the social case-
work process to understanding the progress in the client’s life and to
evaluate the casework effectiveness. Follow up is like after services
provided to the client after the actual delivery of the services.
Follow up helps the agency and caseworkers to analyze the prob-
lems and situation as a case study where they can develop or evaluate
the same problem through different lenses. It also helps them in their
research activities and developing solutions. The experiences gained
from one study can be intelligently applied to the upcoming cases to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the management of the
cases. This is the last step of the social casework process and with
this step, the process ends, but not the relationship built during the
process.
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 43

Unit-2
Theories and Approach to Social
Casework
44 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 45

Chapter Overview
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Problem
• Types of Problem Faced by Individuals and Families
• Individual Differences and Needs: FamilyAssessment in Case-
work Practice
2.2 Theories and Approaches
• The Cognitive Techniques
• Transactional Analysis
• Psycho-Social Approach: Adapted Planned Behavior Model
• Functional Approach: Psychological Assessment
• Problem-Solving Approach: McMaster Model of Family
Functioning
• Crisis Theory
• Family Intervention
• Behavioral Modification Theory: Cognitive-Behavioral Couple
Therapy
46 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 47
2.0 INTRODUCTION
Being in society and interacting with different people and the en-
vironment gives rise to problems. To be specific it can be called
social problems. These are the obstacles that do not allow human
beings to achieve their full potential. Thus, people must get rid of
these problems or adjust to them in a way that does not hinder their
growth. This problem affects everyone in a society directly or indi-
rectly. Reinhardt (1952) defined problems as a situation approaching
a group of people or a section of the society which imposes injurious
repercussions that have to be managed collectively. The following
sections have a detailed analysis of the problems faced by individuals
and the families and also the approaches that can be undertaken to do
away with these problems.
Before coming to the theories of social casework, it is important
to understand the basis on which these theories are based. The theo-
ries related to social casework relies on the facts related to the prob-
lems that an individual is facing. Subsequently in this chapter, the
various types of problems are explained in detail but before that, it is
important to understand that what is a problem?
2.1 PROBLEM
According to the Cambridge dictionary (2020), a problem can
be an event, a situation, person, or thing that needs attention and to be
dealt with or solved. As discussed earlier it is a social component of
society, the interactions and communication process gives rise to a
variety of scenarios that can be good or bad for the people con-
cerned. If it is good, it turns out to be an opportunity for the people
but if it is not according to them, which means it is bad and then it
creates a problem in the life of the concerned individual.
Problems can be of various types but for the understanding, it
shall be expressed as a social problem because all the problem arises
out of the social interactions of human beings.
The early Sociologist held that social problem arises every time
whenever there is a sizeable difference between social ideals and the
48 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

actual achievements of the society (Kerbo and Coleman, 2006). When

society in any manner fails to achieve those ideals, it creates inconve-
nience in the life of the people and hence brings in the problems.
To cope up with these problems the people of the society in the
form of social caseworkers devise various methods to deal with it in
the best suitable method. A suitable method is required because ev-
ery individual is unique and so their problems. To work out a problem
requires tailored measures for everyone.
To understand why these problems, arise in the life of people it is
important to know the reasons for their emergence. In the words of
Mehta (2010), the reasons for the surfacing of issues are following
• Scarcity of material resources
• Scarcity of information and misconceptions arising because
of it
• Health and disability issues
• Emotional issues
• Personality and deficiency issues
Once get thorough with the reasons for why the problems arise
let’s understand the categories of the problems as explained by Methew
(1992). Categorizing problems is important as it gives the social worker
an idea to deal with the issues. For example, health issues require
solutions related to health, monetary issues require a solution to that
specific area. So segregating the problems gives the social workers
an extra hand to deal with problems. The categories are mentioned
below
• Lack of resources issues
• Health issues
• Problems related to educational institutions
• Institutionalization problems
• Problems related to behavior
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 49
• Marital issues
• Situations requiring to follow up services
• Rehabilitation problems
• Disability problems
• Problems related to people caught up in social problem is-
sues like gambling, prostitution, alcoholism, and others
Problems Faced by Individual and Families
This section details the variety of problems categorically as faced
by individuals and families. Figure 2.0 below presents the various
problems that are faced by an individual and society as a whole.

Figure 2.0 Types of problems

(Source: Author)
As shown in figure 2.0 above, the various problems are discussed
briefly in the following section
• Political problems: The problem that arises due to power and
authority mismanagement is generally categorized as political
problems. “One of the most fundamental aspects of all politi-
cal struggles has always concerned with the degree of cen-
50 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

tralization of authority” (Luard and Heater, 1994, pg. 153).

The authority here, simply means that when the people who
are meant to provide services to people begin to rule them or
do not fulfill their duties in a certain manner the problem be-
gan to arise among the people. Also, many times we see
issues like an improper representation of both genders in gov-
ernment at local, state or central level also brings in problems.
Such problems require proper solutions to satisfy people at
large.
• Health problems: This is one of the common problems that
people face. Aging, disease, deficiency, impairment, disabili-
ties are a few issues that people suffer. The situation gets
complicated when people do not understand how to cope up
with these problems and bring back their life on track. In
such cases, also social caseworkers come forward to help
them to maintain the balance between both situations. The
facilities of medical care, inculcating healthier habits, and the
development of a more justified social environment each hold
the potential to improve health (Bunker, 2001).
• Social problems: It is a core term applied to a range of condi-
tions and behaviors which are the exposition of social disor-
ganization. These are the conditions that are undesirable in
society and people want to correct them by changes by the
means of social engineering or social planning (Oxford Dic-
tionary of Sociology, 2009). These problems are in the form
of racism, casteism, drug addiction, alcoholism, and others.
These problems not only affect an individual but the entire
family.
• Religious problems: In a country like India religious problems
seems to appear now and then. Sometimes because of social
reason, personal reason, or political reason. No other prob-
lem affects peace in society as much as this particular prob-
lem. Religious problems many times give rise to communal
tension and riots. It tends to arise in the form of factionalism,
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 51
bigotry, tension, poverty, oppression, inequality, and disorder
in a society (Zuckerman, 2020). For such kind of problem
proper counseling and reality check is important by the social
caseworkers to make people realize the beauty of diversity.
• Psychological problems: Many a time people tend to share
what they are going through but there are now emerging con-
ditions that people especially youth find themselves in a diffi-
cult situation. Where they complicate themselves so much
that it becomes hard for them to express their inner feelings.
This problem can be understood as a combined function of a
person’s mind and its environment (Simon, 2008). Assuming
others may not understand them, people keep all the prob-
lems with them that begin to consume them mentally and their
health conditions deteriorate so much that specialist help is
required to help them to cope up with the conditions.
• Cultural problems: As the region, state, or country changes
the culture also changes. Culture in simple terms can be un-
derstood as customs, behaviors, ideas followed by a group
of people. Now in the era of globalization people generally
faces cultural problems as the mobilization of people has in-
creased a lot. In the contemporary world, it is not hard to see
how cultural spaces are connected and infused with other
cultural spaces of other places (Oswell, 2006). Taking an
example of a country like India, it is so diverse that culture
changes from state to state. When people find it difficult to
accept other’s customs problems tend to surface.
• Economic problems: This is the problem that most people
especially in India suffer at some point in time. The economic
problem is one related to the shortage of resources to sur-
vive. When people find themselves incapable to fulfill their
basic needs of food, clothing, housing, education, and health,
and their basic conditions deteriorate to the level that surviv-
ing becomes an issue. Thus, primarily people seek monetary
help to control economic issues. Scarcity of resources in any
52 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

form gives rise to economic problems and economic calcula-

tion is necessary if the most appropriate use is to be made of
scarce resources (Lange et al, 1938).
Individual Differences and Needs: Family Assessment in Case-
work Practice
Understanding human needs and the reasons for the surfacing of
the differences is of utmost importance for the social caseworkers.
Mathew (1992) has come up with the five arguments that make an
easy roadmap for grasping human conduct. These arguments are
explained briefly below
• A person's behavior is conditioned by the environment and
experiences.
• Certain needs must be met properly for better human growth
and development.
• Emotions are real and one cannot overcome them through
reasoning.
• Individual’s physical and emotional needs drive their behav-
ior.
• People understand others only in terms of their intellectual
and emotional conception.
Acknowledging the various sociological and psychological as-
pects of human behavior, the following are the various issues that oc-
cur within the family. One can understand it as Intra-family violations
or Psychopathology, a way to treat such problems. Intrafamily viola-
tions are the conditions that occur in a relationship with an abusive
adult that leads to the disruption of children’s personalities at a very
young age. Children face loneliness, abuse, and violence which lead
to aggression and thereby they become bitter people. The abuse
from close family members causes psychological disorder, a bad
lifestyle, the tendency of disbelief in others, violence, aggression, and
stress. The poverty-related stress model shows that this stress is one
of the main factors for psychopathology in the low-income group.
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 53
According to Finkelhor et al.(1983), abusive childhood forces
people to become abusive adults. According to the theory of psy-
chopathology, under constant environmental stress, abusive behavior
prevails in the family. Gaioli and Rodrigues (2008) studied the injuries
caused due to domestic abuse and violence in families in Ribeirão
Preto SP, Brazil. The study revealed that 33.5% of injuries were
shoulder and arm trauma caused mainly to men by family members.
The research concluded that increasing adult abuse is leading to dete-
riorating health in the public domain. Thus it is evident that adult abuse
leads to:
• Psychological disorder
• Mental trauma
• Physical trauma
• Violence & Aggression
• Dysfunctional environment (Stanton and Todd, 1982)
Various theories revolve around the abuse to justify the origin
and cause of the abuse. Few of these are briefly explained below
Dual-Process Theories
Chaiken and Trope (1999), discussed the theory of dual-pro-
cess that elaborates the basic principle of human social-psychological
functions. The theory suggests that the rational-emotive and cogni-
tive-behavioral system prevails in individuals that impact social and
psychological behavior. Psychologists believe that the emotions should
last for some definite time and in case the emotions last longer than
that then the individual needs some psychological assistance. The
dual-process theories involve both the social and psychological as-
pects of an individuals’ experience. Therefore, the practice of ethical
social work is carried out on the trust of clients. The problems faced
by adult abuse is therefore shared and kept confidential with the work-
ers to practice the therapies for counseling.
Osman (2004) studied Freud’s dual theory of information pro-
cessing and found that there are two components of the theory. First,
54 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

is the primary system that deals with unconscious thoughts whereas

the second, is the secondary system that deals with the conscious and
rational thought process. The Cognitive Experiential Self Theory
(CEST) also deals with the parallel system of psychoanalysis. The
parallel system analyses the non-experiential system such as rational,
abstract emotions, and experiential systems such as emotionally driven
experiences. Frankish (2010) studied that the unconscious mind is
capable of motivation and also creates mental conflicts that can influ-
ence the conscious thoughts indirectly or through neurotic and sym-
bolic activities such as dreams. On the other hand, the conscious
mind is more logical.
Some of the theorists contradicted Freud’s dual-process theory
since they claimed the theory lacked validity amongst the grown-up
adults (Bucci, 2000). Thus the system failed as it failed to symbolize
unconscious thoughts like dreams. The theory also could not explain
the complex primary process and its integration with the secondary
process for the information processing method.
Evans and Over’s dual-process theory is developed for the dif-
ferent areas of psychology, decision-making, social cognition, learn-
ing, and reasoning. Similar to Freud’s dual-process theory, Evans and
Over’s theory constitutes of the two systems (Evans, 2009). The
theory was based on the direct and indirect psychoanalysis of the
learning and reasoning abilities (Frankish, 2010). The participants
were given a task based on which the response was analyzed. The
quick and fast responses were termed as the indirect or implicit sys-
tem and the slow and conscious responses were termed as the direct
and the explicit system. Evans (2003) conducted experiments to ana-
lyze the learning and reasoning abilities amongst participants which
revealed that responses from participants are challenging since one
system is dependent on conscious and structured thought and the other
is dependent on the unconscious and instant thought.
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 55
Heuristic–Analytic Theory of Reasoning (Bias in Human
Reasoning):
The model of heuristic and analytic theory of reasoning is based
on the two processes of cognitive reasoning, that is, heuristic and
analytic process. Figure 2.1 below shows the model of the Heuristic–
analytic theory of reasoning. According to Kryjevskaia et al. (2014),
the heuristic process is more dependent on the instant response of the
participant rather than the analyzed and conceptualized response. The
heuristic process is a process of the subconscious mind. For instance,
Kryjevskaia et al. (2014) illustrated the example of a participants’
response to a given task, and the immediate response to the task was
analyzed as the heuristic process. Thus the explicit process of evalu-
ation is carried for the heuristic method.

Figure 2.1: Heuristic–analytic theory of reasoning model

(Bias in Human Reasoning)
(adapted from Kryjevskaia et al, 2014)
56 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

The analytic process of the theory is slower, reflective, and based

on rules whereas the heuristic process is instant and dependent on the
intuition of the process. Evans (2006) evaluated the heuristic-analytic
theory of reasoning and found that the theory is linked to the hypo-
thetical thinking process. Hypothetical thinking has three principles
namely singularity principle, relevance principle, and satisfying prin-
ciple.
Family Assessment Measure
In casework practice, assessment of a family is done based on
the measures taken to evaluate the family members. The family has
the scope of rating each other based on the emotions shared with
them. The Family Assessment Measure (FAM) is an approach to
assess a family based on the strengths, weaknesses, and characteris-
tics of the family members (Skinner et al., 2000). The FAM provides
the indices for happiness and sadness due to the behavior and ap-
proach of family members towards each other. Skinner et al. studied
that there are four components of the FAM and they are
• Dyadic Scale
• General Scale
• Self-rating scale
• Brief FAMs
The perspectives are that a family is like a system which in gen-
eral is a viewpoint of most people. The other perspective is that the
family shares a dyadic relationship and so the family is assessed on the
dyadic scale. Hayden et al. (1998) studied that there are three levels
of interaction in a family based on the members of the family. The
three levels of interaction are between parent and child, between
spouse, and in a family as a whole. The FAM was originally designed
to evaluate and analyze the performances of individuals based on the
relationship they shared with their family members back home.
The FAM is challenging in terms of defining the direction of the
responses. The high scale of involvement may resonate with the high
level of distance of the participants from their family members or also
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 57
it could evaluate as the intrusion of the family members into the per-
sonal space of the participants (Skinner et al., 2000). Therefore, it is
very difficult to pinpoint the responses from the FAM approach uni-
versally. However, one of the most important aspects of the approach
is that it uses all the three perspectives of the approach to analyze and
evaluate the family assessment.
Process Model of Family Functioning
The Family Assessment Measure is implemented to design and
construct the Process Model of Family Functioning. There are seven
constructs of the process model of family functioning and they are to
assess family based on the conceptual framework. The seven con-
structs of the process model of family functioning are shown in figure
2.2 below

Figure 2.2: Seven constructs of the Process Model of Family

Functioning
(adapted from Skinner et al., 2000)
58 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

The seven constructs of the model are communication, affective

expression, role performance, task accomplishment, involvement, con-
trol and values, and norms. It is possible when the entire family agrees
to perform the assigned tasks to achieve the target and role perfor-
mances. Once the problems are identified the roles are assigned to
perform the tasks. The roles are performed by keeping effective com-
munication amongst the family to ensure the activities are performed
well. The affective expression elaborates the status of the tasks per-
formed or accomplished as per requirements. Control is a critical
aspect of the model. The norms and values justify the status of mind
– unconscious or conscious, behavior, and attitudes of the family.
Children’s Version of the Family Environment Scale (CVFES)
The family environment scale is a model used to evaluate the
relationship between families and their children. The model probes
the inner relations with the members concerning the children in their
families (Popko and Klingman, 2002). The model evaluates the envi-
ronment in the families using the basic requirements of effective com-
munication, relationships, personal growth, and its encouragement,
and family system maintenance.
The evaluation of personal growth is considered as the underly-
ing aspect of building relations. Personal growth can be in various
fields like social, religious, cultural, or academic. The system mainte-
nance of the family is a measure of capabilities, clarities, and abilities
of a family to assure the nourishment of the children (Popko and
Klingman, 2002). It also assesses the capabilities of family members
in contributing to the establishment of communication amongst them-
selves and encourages personal growth. The system maintenance
also determines the emotional boundaries of the family that is equally
important to bond with the children.
Sanford, Bingham, and Zucker (1999) studied the Family Envi-
ronment Scale (FES) and its utility to probe 319 families. The data
comprised of the self-report variables and the observational variables.
The families probe belonged to different categories such as anti-social
and non-antisocial alcoholic families and non-alcoholic control fami-
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 59
lies. The study revealed that the anti-social and non-antisocial alco-
holic families differed from each other on different parameters (Sanford
et al. 1999). The findings of the research revealed that FES is impor-
tant in determining the internal psychometric characteristics of families
that are alcoholics.
Family Functioning in Adolescence Questionnaire (FFAQ)
Roelofse and Middleton (1985) studied the psycho health of
families using the Family Functioning in Adolescence Questionnaire
(FFAQ). The FFAQ assessed the families who dealt with adolescent
teenagers in their families. The study examined the dimensions of the
function of the family. The FFAQ also helped in research for the
integration of the family systems that dealt with the development of the
adolescents.
The six dimensions of the family system are the structure, affect,
behavior control, communication, external systems, and value trans-
mission (Rigby, 1994; Roelofse and Middleton, 1985). A family with
a positive structure to design upon is prone to developing a positive
environment for the young ones. The clear and transparent communi-
cation regarding the happenings around makes the structure more
complex yet understanding. The effect of clear communication makes
an impact on the behavior of the young ones. Clear communication
develops the ethics and values in the young ones that induce the con-
trol of the behavior in the family system (Rigby, 1994). The transmis-
sions of ethics from the parents to the young ones are a very important
parameter to achieve the positive psycho health of the adolescents.
Rigby found that the FFAQ is limited in its process as it cannot assess
the personalities of the participants since the characteristics of an indi-
vidual is independent of the upbringing of the families.
Family Process Scale (FPS)
A Family Process Scale or FPS is a measurement of the degree
and intensity of conversation between the couples and their children.
FPS evaluates the relationship shared amongst the couples and the
children based on the factors regulating the scale.
60 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Samani (2008) studied the function of Iranian families by devel-

oping a reliable and valid scale. The study was carried in two phases
with around 225 couples in the first phase and 1100 couples in the
second phase. The pilot phase or the first phase was based on the
analysis of the couples and the results emerged out as a 55 item scale.
The second phase of the main phase constituted the married men and
women and the results developed the FPS. The results of the re-
search are the five main points of the family process scale which are
cohesion, communication, problem-solving skills, religious beliefs, and
coping strategies.
Index of Family Relations (IFR)
The Index of Family Relations or IFR is a measurement tool of
the parameters to determine the functioning of families in terms of the
family members. According to Daley et al. (1990) IFR consists of 25
items that measure the extent and magnitude of the problems faced in
a family. The problems are experienced with one another within the
family. The scores evaluated using the IFR are a measurement of the
stress in a family and that is a global measure of the factor. The IFR is
a consistent and minimum error measure for the evaluation of the stress
in the family. The participants are assessed based on the twenty-five
questions in the IFR that evaluates the demographic details, income
status, and emotional relationship of family members with each other.
The IFR is a well-accepted measure globally as it has validity in its
results and that the results are reliable.
Aziz and Shah (1995) studied the differences between alcoholic
and non-alcoholic families by investigating the students of universities
from Lahore, Peshawar, and Islamabad. The study was based on the
environments of the family, home, and relationships with a society
where respondents were young aged around twenty-three. The re-
spondents were evaluated using the IFR and the peer relations ques-
tionnaire. The study found that the addicts belonged to high-income
families and that they had more peer pressure as compared to the
non-addicts.
2.2. THEORIES AND APPROACHES
Below mentioned are the various theories used by the social case-
worker in the situation of conflict and problem solving of the patient or
client. These theories or approach gives the social caseworker an
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 61
idea about the kind of problem and what could be the best possible
technique to be used for effective and efficient achievement of the
solution.
The Cognitive Techniques
After discussing the patterns of distorted thinking, now let’s see
the techniques used by counselors to help clients with emotional dis-
turbance due to distorted thoughts. The clients having distorted thoughts
often come to the counselors in a miserable state of mind. The cogni-
tive-behavioral techniques are based on the premise that the way a
person thinks can affect the way it feels and behaves as understood
from Figure 2.3 below. To overcome such emotional disturbances
and feel better, mental health persons need to change their ways of
thinking. Cognitive therapy seeks first to identify dysfunctional thought
processes, and next to correct them. The common characters of the
cognitive approach include a collaborative relationship between cli-
ents and counselors, homework between sessions. It will be of short
duration. These techniques are effective for treating mild depression,
anxiety, and anger problems. Some of the important techniques can
be mentioned as rational-emotive, cognitive-behavioral, reality, and
transactional analysis.

Figure 2.3: Components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

(source: Author)
62 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

• Rational-Emotive
The rational-emotive approach to counseling is based on the
theory developed by the American psychologist Albert Ellis (1995).
The theory revolves around the fact that everyone has emotions. In-
tense emotions should last only a few moments and if they are endur-
ing then, the person needs to look closely at the way of thinking.
According to the theory, which Ellis calls an ABC theory of events
and emotions, the events themselves do not cause emotions, it is rather
what we learn to believe or think about these events, create the emo-
tions. The theory further suggests that emotions are so intense that
they interfere with normal life. The rational-emotive counselor helps
the counselee to understand how and why the thinking is illogical. The
aim is to help the person to change the way of thinking and to aban-
don irrational ideas. This is done by directly contradicting, encourag-
ing, persuading, and at times insisting that the clients try some activity
that will counteract.
• Cognitive-Behavioral
This therapy looks at changing negative thought patterns and mal-
adaptive beliefs. Maladaptive beliefs are ideas about one that may
not necessarily be true, but still, harm their wellbeing. For the behav-
iorist, counseling involves the systematic use of a variety of proce-
dures that are intended specifically to change behavior in terms of
mutually established goals between a client and a counselor. The
procedures employed to encompass a wide variety of techniques
drawn from knowledge of learning processes. A well-known leader
in psychology, Krumboltz (1966), historically placed these proce-
dures into four categories namely, Operant Learning, Imitative Learn-
ing, Cognitive Learning, and Emotional learning. Three examples of
behavioral change appropriate to counseling are the altering of be-
havior that is not satisfactory, the learning of the decision-making pro-
cess, and problem prevention (Gibson, 2004). In many ways, prac-
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 63
ticing behavioral counselors follow an approach similar to that of other
counselors in clarifying and understanding the needs of their clients.
They use reflection, summarization, and open-ended inquiries. Be-
havioral counselors often take on the roles of a teacher or a coach.
• Reality Therapy
Another technique of counseling that has gained popularity in re-
cent decades is that of Reality therapy. It was developed by William
Glasser, an American psychiatrist. Reality therapy holds that people
are responsible for their behavior. Glasser (2000) believes that man’s
basic problem is moral, in the sense that being responsible is the re-
quirement for mental health. He defines responsibility as the ability to
fulfill one’s needs and to do so in a way that does not deprive others
of the ability to fulfill their needs. Reality therapy is based on the
person’s need for love and constructive activity. The counselor by
understanding the present activities of the client helps them to plan
better choices and obtain a commitment to work towards those choices.
This technique guides the client towards making those choices of be-
havior which helps them to move in the direction of successful in-
volvement with others.
Transactional Analysis
The transactional analysis assumes that a person has the poten-
tial for choosing and redirecting or reshaping one’s destiny. Berne
(2016) did much to develop and popularize this theory in the 1960s.
It is designed to help a client review and evaluate early decisions and
to make new, more appropriate choices. The transactional analysis
places a great deal of emphasis on the ego, which consists of three
states namely, Parent, Adult, and Child as shown in Figure 2.4. Each
of these states can take charge of the individual to the point that his or
her observable behavior indicates who’s in charge (adult, parent, or
child).
64 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Figure 2.4 Transactional Analysis

(Hartley, 2020)
When one of the three ego states is unwilling to relinquish its
control and asserts it rigidly, especially in inappropriate ways, the cli-
ent is in difficulty and need psychological assistance. The client is
assisted in gaining social control of his or her life by learning to use all
ego states appropriately. Transactional analysis views normal per-
sonality as a product of healthy parenting. The ultimate goal of coun-
seling, by using transactional analysis, is to help the client change from
inappropriate life positions and behaviors to more productive behav-
iors.
An essential technique in the transactional analysis is the con-
tract that precedes each counseling step. This contract between the
counselor and the counselee is a way of training or preparing a person
to make his/her own decision. In addition to the contract technique,
the transactional analysis also utilizes questionnaires, life scripts, struc-
tural analysis, and role-playing, analysis of games and rituals, and strok-
ing reinforcement. Although not a counseling technique, transactional
analysis sessions are tape-recorded in their entirety (Gibson, 2004).
Transactional analysis is a procedure for counseling persons within a
group setting.
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 65
The Transactional analysis is a method or approach used to a
concert on the psychic changes. The Transactional analysis focuses
on the changes that occur within minds and is known as the intrapsy-
chic (Tilney, 1998). Transactional analysis is a method that allows
everyone to make decisions for them. For the clinical judgment of the
family assessment, the transactional analysis theory was applied to
address the problem. There are feelings in the analysis that addresses
the issues. The four feelings are happiness, sadness, anger, and glad-
ness. Transactional therapy focuses on the consent of the client to
make the assessment. It is a contract that looks at the micro-level of
the process and simultaneously negotiates the macro-level process
for the assessment.
Psycho-Social Approach: Adapted Planned Behavior Model
Adapted Planned Behavior Model or APBM is an approach that
uses the theoretical framework of the psycho-social approach (Levy
et al., 2008). The model adheres to the rehabilitation for both sports
and non-sports experiences. There are various variables in a psycho-
social approach to evaluate the rehabilitation. The variables are goal
orientation, attitude, and threat perception. These variables are used
to design the APBM. Figure 2.5 shown below depicts the variables in
sequence.

Figure 2.5: Planned Behavior Model

(adapted from Levy et al, 2008)
66 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

The APBM consists of two factors that are primary factors and
secondary factors. The primary factors are threat appraisals, goal ori-
entation, and attitude. The secondary factors include coping ability,
treatment efficacy, and social support. The initial phase of the APBM
focuses on self-motivation and self-efficacy. Later on, the primary
factors are implemented to apply the APBM model. These two steps
intend to adhere to the rehabilitation of the individual. However, to
remain adhered to the rehabilitation the secondary factors are imple-
mented. The individual is analyzed using the coping mechanism, treat-
ment efficacy, and provided social support. This process is repeated
until the process converts into action and it becomes a habit.
Functional Approach: Psychological Assessment
A psychological assessment is carried to analyze the behavior
and performance of an individual (Haynes et al., 1995). The elements
of the assessment instruments are the information and the data pro-
vided from the respondents analyzed through the questionnaires and
various sampling processes. These elements are crucial in observing
the pattern and the performance of the individuals. The assessments
of the elements are done through reporting, direct observation, tests,
and the formulae. The assessment instruments are obtained through
methods of sampling, questionnaires, and measurements. The con-
tent validity is assessed using the quantitative approach and that the
validity is estimated using the relativity of the information to the clinical
judgment and its relevance.
The other important aspect of the psychological assessment is to
construct validity. Construct validity defines the attributes and the vari-
ables of the measurement of the assessment instrument. Construct
validity is the degree of content validity and that the constructs are the
variables of the content. Content validity is a very important aspect as
it navigates the direction of the psychological assessment. The con-
tent of the questionnaire of the assessment gives an impact on the
responses of the participants and thereby gives a concept and con-
struct to the responses. The content validity is very important to frame
the questionnaire and assessment instrument for the psychological as-
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 67
sessment. There are four types of assessment methods namely, ques-
tionnaires, behavioral observation, psychophysiology, and self-moni-
toring. The elements of content validity for all the types of assess-
ments are the array of items selected for the questionnaire, codes, and
methods. (Haynes et al. 1995).
Problem-Solving Approach: McMaster Model of Family
Functioning
The McMaster Model of Family Functioning aims to describe
the approach to treat families effectively. It approaches clarity and
transparency in the treatment and thus brings the effective judgment of
the treatment. The model is based on the basic assumptions of the
systems theory (Miller et al., 2000). The assumptions are basic and
general information regarding the families. It is considered that the
families are inter-related and that the part of the family cannot be
isolated from the rest of the family members. It is very important to
analyze the basic structure of the family as the structure of the family
gives a lot of information on the behavior of an individual. The model
describes the factors or determinants of family functioning and identi-
fies the dimension of the clinical judgment. The dimensions of the
model are communication, problem-solving, roles, affective respon-
siveness, affective involvement, behavior control, and dysfunctional
transactional patterns.
Effective communication is a very important aspect of family func-
tioning. Effective communication involves verbal exchange, empathy,
and interaction amongst the family members. The problem-solving
ability defines the capability of a family to solve issues. The problem-
solving ability focuses on the relevance of the problem in the family
functioning. The roles of family members in a family are a very impor-
tant aspect to understand the functioning of the family. The roles de-
termine the dimension of the integrity and unity of the family.
One of the most important aspects of the dimensions of family
functioning is effective responsiveness. Effective responsiveness is
the ability to emote and empathize with the emotions of the family
members. Behavior control is a dimension that involves the behavior
68 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

adopted by the family in physically threatening situations or psycho-

logically affected situations. The behavior adapted depicts the daily
routine of the family members.
Crisis Theory
Woolley (1990) studied the crisis theory to analyze the stress
and disturbance caused to the admission in the critical care unit. The
study was based on the distress faced by the individual and his family
when he was admitted to the hospital for treatment in the critical care
unit. The crisis theory suggested the framework of the nursing care
provided for the individual. Brown and Salamon (1987) studied the
stress in the farmers due to the loss in the farm crisis. The stress was
dominant as the loss of the farm resulted in the financial loss of the
families solely dependent on the farm. The study was based on the
family stress model of Mc Cubbin and Patterson. The theoretical
framework of the model gave a counseling instrument for the families.
Beckingham and Baumann (1990) studied the stress and dis-
traught in elderly members of the family due to aging. The study was
conceptualized by the theoretical framework of the crisis theory in
families due to aging. The research was based on the systematic
assessment of families in stress and the decision-making model of the
families is elaborated. The models identified the paradigm of the prob-
lems in the family and thereby evaluated the cause of the problems.
Family Intervention
Rosenthal and Young (1988) studied the family intervention of
families with patients with brain injury. The study was on the theoreti-
cal framework of the family intervention technique with the medical
professionals who dealt with brain injury patients. The research con-
cluded that family intervention must be regarded as the services appli-
cable in the rehabilitation centers and the communities.
Although the main root of most of the issues or conflict is some-
where lies in a family or society in a general. But one cannot deny the
fact in the troubled times it the family whose support is most needed
by the person and hence, in such cases they proved to be the appro-
priate measure through which the patient's condition can be cured or
 Theories and Approach to Social Casework 69
bettered effectively. Family engagement and interventions with the
patient improve their mood and health. It suggests how caregiving
can improve the person with disorder and illness.
Behavioral Modification Theory: Cognitive-Behavioral
Couple Therapy
The Cognitive-¬Behavioral Couple Therapy is an integration of
the behavioral couple therapy, basic research on information processing,
and cognitive therapy (Baucom et al, 2008). According to the theory,
the couples were analyzed based on the positive outcomes from the
conjugal lives. The more number of positive outcomes in a conjugal
life resulted in successful marriages and that the less number of posi-
tive outcomes resulted in denoted the unsuccessful marriage. Thus it
is defined as the behavior couple therapy is dependent on the fre-
quency of the positive outcomes in conjugal life. The communication
amongst the family members, interactions with each other and the
relationship shared were evaluated.
Another factor that led to the development of Cognitive-Behav-
ioral is cognitive therapies. The therapy was critically useful for the
couples in distress and used the conventions of the behavior couple
therapy. The cognitive therapy evaluated the couple’s extreme be-
havior towards each other and that interpreted that the extreme or the
unreasonable expectations in a conjugal partnership may lead to dis-
tress in the couples.
The two important pillars of social cognition research are attribu-
tions and schemas. The attributions are the characteristics developed
due to the number of positive and negative outcomes of the family.
The attributions are the resultant of the problems or their consequences
in the behavior of an individual. For instance, an individual may feel
demanded as their spouse is very caring. Thus it impacts the basic
elements of social cognition research. The second pillar that is impor-
tant in social cognition research is the schemas. The schemas are the
traits an individual acquires due to the experience shared in the past
moments. Due to the increasing impact of the behavior in the family
on the individual, the social cognition research developed into the
Cognitive-¬Behavioral Couple Therapy.
 Tools and Techniques 71

Unit-3
Tools and Techniques
72 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Tools and Techniques 73

Chapter Overview

3.0 Casework’s Tools

• Listening
• Interview
• Observation
• Building a relationship
• Home visits
3.1 Records
• Nature of Records
• Purpose of maintaining records
• Recording Principles
3.2 Methods of Casework
• Supportive
• Resource Enhancement
• Counseling
3.3 Professional Self as Social Casework Profession
74 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Tools and Techniques 75

3.0 CASEWORKER’S TOOLS

Tools are anything that acts as a means to help a man in achieving
something. According to Cambrige Dictionary (2020), a tool is some-
thing that helps you to do a particular activity. In the process of social
casework, the tools that workers use are more of abstract nature.
The tools used are not in physical form but are intangible and the
efficiency of these tools is based on how efficient is the caseworker.
Mathew (1992) describes the casework tool as
• A method of contacting or accessing something
• A mode through which the energy or force is transmitted to-
wards something
There is a purpose behind explaining the term in this manner.
Firstly, Mathew described caseworker’s tool as a method of contact-
ing that is caseworker uses these tools to contact their clients and
access information from them. In the subsequent sections, the various
tools are explained to understand how caseworkers extract informa-
tion from the client using these tools. Secondly, Mathew describes it
as a mode through which we transmit energy towards something. It
means that through these tools the caseworker tries to let the client
understand the root cause of their problems and take them out of the
issues.
These tools help in taking out information from the client directly
and indirectly. The information extracted through these tools helps
the caseworker to help a client in a better and efficient manner. Let’s
understand the types of tools used by a caseworker in detail.
• Listening
• Interview
• Observation
• Building a relationship
• Home visits
76 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Listening
Listening is different from hearing, it is an effective psychological
tool. Good listening ability means the competence to comprehend the
information gained during listening activities (Hadijah et al, 2016).
Listening is carefully hearing and observing the details expressed by
the speaker. Mental concentration is a must while listening. A coun-
selor should listen effectively to grasp the most out of the said words.
The listener should also be an active listener, not a selective listener
because when one listens selectively it leads to judgment, distortions,
criticism, and evaluation. For example, when two people have an
argument they tend to become selective listeners and only listens and
respond to those things which they find offensive, leaving good things
aside. Listening is an important tool for social caseworkers as the
clients they usually deal with are not always the ones who speak out
their problem directly and then the caseworkers straightforwardly tell
them the solution and everything is sorted out. In most of the cases,
they have to understand the indirect meaning of the words that the
client due to some reason is not able to speak out frankly.
To know why listening becomes so much important for the case-
worker, it is important to understand that casework is a kind of ser-
vice where understanding the client is of utmost importance. He be-
fore applying any psychological methodology like ahead of analysis,
ahead of classification, thinking, or before doing anything, the thera-
pist first listens to the client (Gilligan and Eddy, 2017). From this, we
can understand the importance of listening.
While listening the counselor should avoid all kinds of distrac-
tions. Distractions are the disturbances that do not allow the person
to focus on what is being said. These distractions can be a person’s
own thoughts, their presumptions related to a problem or person,
selective listening, or the anxiety while communicating with others.
The counselor should try to avoid these distractions on there as well
as on the part of clients too. Having no proper knowledge of the
language (Ghaderpanahi, 2012) is also one of the obstacles while
listening so a caseworker should take cases in the language they un-
 Tools and Techniques 77

derstand or get proper knowledge of that language beforehand if tak-

ing up a case in other languages.
Interview
An interview means interactions between two persons for a defi-
nite reason. It is a purposeful dialogue. Kadushin and Kadushin
(1997, p.3) defines the interview as “the most pervasive basic social
work skill”. It is a tool that supports the caseworker while working
with the client. An interview is a method of understanding the client’s
ability to tackle the problem. It is the more professional form of con-
versation. It is deliberately done for a specific purpose, which is help-
ing the client with their problems. The conversation is done in the
form of questions and answers. It is a face-to-face and two-way
interaction, which involves both verbal and non-verbal communica-
tion.
Kumar (2008) explains that the interview taken by social case-
workers are also professional but it is also more than the usual profes-
sional interviews. In a professional interview, the interviewer and in-
terviewee may not know about each other, but when social case-
workers prepare for any interview they tend to know about the client
well in advance. Kumar defines a few characteristics that make social
caseworker interviews different from the others. These features are
• The social caseworker’s interview is standardized and tailor-
made keeping in view the uniqueness of the client’s problem.
As every client comes with their personalized problem thus
the caseworker also has to begin with a conversation through
which they may get to know about the client’s inner issues.
• Issues of the clients are eventually solved through their own
initiatives only. Thus social workers while interviewing them
always make them feel the important aspect of the complete
process.
• The interview taken by social caseworkers does not always
begin as a professional one. Sometimes social caseworker
considering the circumstances of a client has to adopt situ-
ational strategies to deal with them.
78 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

• The social caseworkers’ interview is generally done with

troubled people, those who are in some problem. The client
is facing issues and only because of it, an interview is taking
place.
• The interview taken by a social caseworker is always intended
to build up a strong personal rapport. So that the client may
share their issues openly with the caseworkers.
Interview whether casual or professional is all about asking ques-
tions. Okoli et al (2017) in their paper ‘Interviewing and counseling
as social work tools’ discuss the type of questions that a caseworker
may ask from the client. These questions are
• Open-ended and closed questions: Open-ended questions
are those that supposed to have elaborated answers. Open-
ended questions allow one to give elaborated explanations of
subjective emotions (Hybels and Weave, 2001). For ex-
ample, why you always be alone? Or why do you feel like to
have drugs? On the other hand, closed questions are quite
straight questions and have short answers. These questions
give no space for explanation. Like what is your name? Do
you like ice-cream?
• Primary and secondary questions: Primary question is one
that fulfills the inquisitiveness regarding the issue whereas the
secondary questions clarify the issue by giving additional in-
formation. Like does your son gets anxiety attacks? Is the
primary question whereas auxiliary questions like how often
does he get uncontrolled? what are the issues that make him
go anxious? And similar ones are a secondary question.
Pearason et al. (2003) define the primary question that intro-
duces the area of inquiry and are reasonable in themselves
while secondary questions follow the trial of discovered in-
formation in the previous question.
• Neutral and leading question: Questions whose answers are
based on the beliefs of the client are neutral questions whereas
 Tools and Techniques 79

when the interviewer asks a question that influences the client

to answer only that what the interviewer wants to hear is the
leading question (Slesser and Blair, 2014). Neutral questions
are answered as per the client’s opinion like how a person
thinks about their family members? whereas leading ques-
tions influence the client to give words to the interviewer’s
opinion. Like a client cannot deal when someone talks about
his past. Or why the client is not comfortable with the specific
part of his past?
Observation
It is the skill that helps in understanding the non-verbal behavior
of the person (Dassi, 2020). It is understanding things that a client
does not speak, it is just like watching what the clients are doing. It
helps in understanding the client and the problem better. It includes
noticing the outward appearance of the client, the gesture, facial ex-
pression, postures, and body language (Mathew, 1992). Whether a
client is comfortable while talking or showing signs of uneasiness makes
a counselor understand the mental situation of the client. The man-
nerism also talks a lot about the human personality which also helps
social workers in deciding the nature of the client and the issues re-
lated to it.
To have a better insight on observation let us look at the proce-
dure of observation. It may not be strictly followed in every case but
every therapist goes through these procedures while dealing with a
client. These are given below
1. Observing the behavior: It is like when a therapist meets a
client or a patient, the therapist monitors the client based on the details
that he has read about the case. Like if a client is being diagnosed
with anger management then the therapist may observe the reasons
that trigger anger in the client.
2. Recording the behavior: Once the therapist has made obser-
vation he will after the session will record all the important observed
behavior that would help him in the case further. Like in the above-
80 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

mentioned example the therapist may record the events when the cli-
ent triggered, how he reacted, what makes him calm, and other im-
portant related things.
3. Analyzing and Interpreting the behavior: After recording the
information than the therapist based on the theories and the experi-
ences will analyze the patient's condition to interpret the root cause of
the problem. Sorting out the root cause of the problem will automati-
cally resolve the issue.
4. After interpreting the behavior now, the therapist selects the
appropriate method or group of methods that he will apply to bring
back the patient to the normal conditions.
It is not always the client knows that he is being observed. Some-
times the therapist tells them in advance that they are being treated but
in a few cases, the therapist does not tell the client about themselves
and gets friendly with clients in a casual way. The reason to follow
such a strategy is that when people know that they are being ob-
served they start pretending and do not show the real self thus thera-
pist does it the other way round. The observation process can be
time-consuming as usually, the client opens up gradually.
The observations made can be in a controlled environment or in
a natural way (McLeod, 2015). Under a controlled environment, the
therapist usually takes the client to his clinic where the environment is
such that direct or persuade the client to open up the specific type of
emotion. O4how the client behaves in different settings. While ob-
serving the therapist has to remove all the presumption related to the
problem as he might have solved such cases before but each case has
some individual characteristics that are unique to each case thus it is
said that observation as a “phenomenon starts without prior judg-
ment, hypotheses or preconceptions” (Suen and Ary, 2014, pg.6).
Building Relationships
The relationship is a major factor that helps to bring out effective
results in the counseling process. The counselors should know and
be careful while building, maintaining, and should restore the relation-
 Tools and Techniques 81

ship to work with complicated clients (Grant, 2006). Accordingly,

the counselor must dedicate the time throughout the counseling pro-
cess to foster a good relationship with clients. Counselors have to use
conscious techniques with the client and try to pull out past experi-
ences intentionally to promote a therapeutic relationship with the cli-
ent. (Stargell, 2017)
The counselor’s main work is to correctly understand the client
and establish personalized and authentic confrontations with them
(Kabir, 2017). Though the relationship established in social case-
work by nature is professional as it ends when the issue got resolved
while the case is going on the caseworker has to bring in a personal
touch in the relationship built. It gives clients an extra space to open
up and talk freely about their issues and move the case in the direction
of the desired end. This professional relationship is a more therapeu-
tic relationship that is directed towards improving human conditions.
The counselors may begin with a small promise or being true to
their words that would build the confidence of the client in him. Gradu-
ally the counselor should start to talk about the actual problem with
the client. Because if a counselor from the start itself without devel-
oping any bonding with the client starts talking about the problems,
then the client may take him as a stranger and would hesitate to share
the problems. But once the relationship is built the client himself starts
staring at the issues. This is evident in the case of depression patients
who take a lot of time before discussing their real issues with the
counselor.
Home Visit
It is an important tool of social casework. The purpose of a
home visit is to establish a good relationship with the family member
and client. Wasik and Byrant (2001) explain home visit as a process
where people get help from the professionals at their own home. “This
help focuses on social, emotional, cognitive, educational, and/or health
needs & often takes place over an extended period of time” (Wasik
and Byrant,2001, p. 1). House visits mainly done to interact with
family members and understand the social and economic background
82 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

of the client. It can be called a place of the interview also. Where

apart from interacting with the client, the family members, sometimes
community and patient’s behavior with all of them is monitored.
The social worker must take the permission of the client to visit
their house. A caseworker should never visit the client’s house with-
out prior information. It should be a well-planned and well-informed
visit. But in some cases, it can be a surprise visit also just to ensure
that whatever is picturized before the counselor is correct or not. Also,
the client and his family members should know the purpose of the
home visit by a social worker. Without family members' support, a
home visit becomes a difficult task. There is a proper method of how
a caseworker should visit a client’s home. Like
• firstly, the social worker should introduce them properly to
the family members of the client.
• Then listen to the problems of the client as explained by the
client and family members without any interruption.
The social worker should make sure that they meet all the mem-
bers of the family without fail. The time at which they visit their client
is also important. Usually, the evening time is suitable for the family
members as they return from their work. The social worker must also
have a valid identity card as it tends to build faith on the part of the
client. As the patient and their problems are unique, similarly the method
applied by social caseworkers should also be tailor-made for every
client. Like if the client is mentally retarded, the social worker should
have more concern towards the person and family members. More
love and affection should be shown towards the client.
The visits and follow up also has to be pre-planned. The home
visit usually has to be done twice or thrice as per the need of the
information collection. Sometimes, maybe in one visit, it is possible to
collect the information needed for counseling and treatment. It de-
pends on various factors on the part of the client as well as the family
members. Like family member’s openness may give complete infor-
mation on the first visit only or it can also be a skill of the social worker
 Tools and Techniques 83

to win their confidence and get the information. Once the home visit is
decided, it should never be postponed. In a day, there should not be
two house visits to be planned. One day one home visit should be the
rule to be followed.
Steps to be followed during the home visit.
• Take the permission of the client. This is called informed con-
sent
• Family member’s permission and cooperation should be re-
quested
• Fix the day and schedule of visit and a caseworker should
adhere to this schedule
• Social worker to do self-introduction properly
• Social workers to actively listen to the dialogue. Avoid un-
necessary questioning
• Mobile calls should be stopped. There should be no interrup-
tion of phone calls. Ask all to switch off the mobiles. This will
help speedy completion of the purpose of visit as well as gives
a silent environment
3.1 RECORDS
The process of noting down relatable information in a systematic
way about the client is known as recording in social casework prac-
tice. This information includes the client's name, the issue the person is
facing, the factors behind the issue, diagnosis of the issue, the progress
of the issue communicated, and the process in which the issue will be
dealt with and to be terminated.
As we have seen in the tools sections of the casework that how
the counselor or the therapist jot down every important behavior re-
lated to the client, his behavior, and his family. This not only acts as a
readymade information system for the counselor but also helps them
for research and development purposes. It is not a hidden fact that
the psychological aspect of human beings is now given due impor-
84 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

tance and every organization is working at their level best to develop

the modes and tools through which they can deal with the common
psychological problems.
Nature
The nature of the record maintained depends on the various fac-
tors like the type of the issue, the consulting agency requirements to
mention a few. The records are protected legally and cannot be dis-
closed under any circumstance other than a few exceptions.
Dr. Cynthia Sturm, a clinical psychologist, who is also a member
of the American Psychological Association (APA) defines the nature
of records as maintained by social caseworkers as
• It should be well written and well organized
• It must contain all the information related to the diagnosis of
the client
• It must maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the client
• It must communicate the objectives and methodology of the
study
• It must adhere to the laws governing its profession
• It must contain authentic information
• It should also contain the treatment fee and agreements apart
from the treatment process
Keeping in view all the above-mentioned points, a counselor must
prepare the records related to the client accordingly.
Purpose
Following are the purpose of maintaining records by the social
caseworker
• Recording the client's information helps to do a successful
assessment of the solution given to the client (Kagle,1984).
• Recordings help any further casework process where the is-
sue might have any similarity with the already worked one.
 Tools and Techniques 85

• Recording helps in arranging the information for orderly thinking

about the issue. (Dassi, 2020)
• It is easier to get to the issue if a record is kept and also
increases understanding about past issues.
• It helps in better planning for the next interview.
• It helps in the continuation of the social casework process if
there is a long gap between two sessions. It’s easier for the
caseworker to catch up in that case.
• It is also a good measurement technique for the agency’s abil-
ity to solve the client’s issue.
• Future references and accountability (Thomassen, 2001) are
made easy.
• It adds to the knowledge of the caseworkers and social work
case practice.
• Can serve as good study material for students wanting to take
up social casework as a profession.
• It can also serve as a statistical document of data for social
issues.
• Recordings also help in social research.
• For any future legal complaints, recordings can serve to be
relevant data.
Principles of Recordings
Some basic principles help to form a good record. A record
however is a pliable instrument that adapts to the need of the case.
Hence, there is no ideal recording standard in social casework. Each
case and its solution is different; hence the recording outline also var-
ies.
• Any recording must be arranged in an orderly manner.
• Any casework recording must be simple and easy to under-
stand.
86 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

• Whenever possible, a recording of individual reactions should

be recorded.
• The sources of the information, the people involved should be
made clear in the recording
• The recordings must be detailed
• Taking notes of the important point is to be done at the end of
the consultation.
• Recordings should be accurate and to the point.
• There should be clarity in the recordings made.
• The objectives and the outcome of the session are to be made
clear in the recordings. (Sagayaraj,2015)
3.2 METHODS OF CASEWORK
Methods are the kind of help provided by the social case-
workers to the client. Mathew (1992) classify these methods into
three sections. These methods are based on the kind of help required
by the client. For example, does the client requires tangible or intan-
gible help. Tangible help is about help by providing resources be it
food, money, or other things whereas intangible help is in the form of
support, motivation, encouragement, and so on. Let’s look at the
various categories as explained by Mathew. He divided methods into
three sections namely,
• Supportive
• Resource Enhancement
• Counseling
Supportive Methods
Supportive methods are the one where social caseworkers pro-
vide the help that boosts the mental abilities of the client and make
them self reliant and confident. The various kind of support provided
by the social caseworker to the client are explained below. These are
Acceptance:This method is based on the principle of acceptance
of the client by the social caseworker. As explained in unit one the
 Tools and Techniques 87

principle emphasizes the fact that recognizing a person’s problem with

a positive perspective is very necessary. In the act of helping a rela-
tionship pass through the various issues, where acceptance becomes
a fundamental element. Basic respect and love have to be developed
for people without considering their weakness (Friedlander, 1958).
Acceptance of the client’s good and bad qualities, strength along with
his weakness is very necessary.
Acceptance means accepting the client in literal terms with all of
the good and bad characteristics of the client. If the social case-
worker will be judgmental in the attitude towards the client, there will
also be bias in understanding the client completely. Thus, the social
caseworker needs to keep aside all of his biases and look at the client
as the client look at himself.
Empathy: it is understanding and being sensitive to others’ feel-
ings and emotions. Alma and Smaling (2006) define empathy as a
two-dimensional concept. One is mental and another is the social di-
mension. The mental dimension is about the cognitive or interpreta-
tion part whereas the social dimension is about how one responds or
expresses their response. Response or expression is critical because
empathy is about how one person understands the other, after know-
ing or understanding how a person will express their thoughts bring a
major difference. For example, while talking to a stressed person,
one may feel that there is no major issue that should cause stress but
making this thing realize the stressed person is what changes the be-
havior.
Empathy is quite an important aspect of social caseworkers. The
notion of empathy is like a long history in social work literature (Lietz
et al, 2011). The characteristic of empathy in social caseworker is
what can change the entire casework. Dealing with the client and
making them recognize the issues is a challenging job for a social case-
worker. When the client feels that the caseworker is being empathetic
and is trying to understand their problems, they tend to express their
inner feelings frankly with social caseworkers. Which acts as an aux-
iliary factor in solving the case. It acts wonders when the casework-
ers very conveniently give words to the client’s emotion.
88 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Encouragement, assurance, and reassurance:Encouragement is

giving mental support to others. The social caseworker tries to men-
tally aid the client that the decision taken by him can result as ex-
pected if the client takes responsibility for it. It is like buttering the
actions of the client (Mathew, 1992) to make him confident with their
actions. Assurance is giving a sense of confidence to someone and
pushing them to look at their strength rather than on weaknesses. It
uplifts the confidence of the person within the logical and practical
premises. All these actions of encouragement, assurance, and reas-
surance work in combination. It persuades the client to make a deci-
sion then assures and reassures the client for the success of the deci-
sion taken.
Apart from mental support it also gives emotional support to
the client by building up confidence in them. Ultimately the client has
to command their life so the caseworker trains the client in a way that
they in the future become responsible for their life and the decisions
are taken. It makes clients capable enough that instead of doubting
their decision they take charge of it.
Facilitation of expression of feelings:This method means that the
social caseworker must help the client to vent out their inner feelings
completely. When any emotion stays within a human being for a while,
it stocks up and acts as an obstacle in thinking and deciding. There-
fore, it becomes a crucial task for the social caseworker to help a
client to speak and throw out all the piled up emotions be it anger,
guilt, despair, or sorrow.
Accrediting and building self-confidence:This method simply
means that social caseworkers cannot solve all the problems of the
client by themselves. Any number of counseling given to a client may
not prove fruitful if the client does not hold the responsibility of their
life. Thus the intention of the caseworker must be towards giving
credits to the strengths of the client and making them capable to deal
with anything coming their way. A self-confident client can deal with
most of their problems on their own.
 Tools and Techniques 89

Resource Enhancement Methods

Another type of method used by social caseworker is resource
enhancement methods. Resource enhancement is about providing
conditions to the client where they can better cope up with their issues
and could give better direction to their life. This help is generally given
by providing material or non-material help. Let’s understand it in brief
Material help: Not every person requires mental and emotional
support. Some clients come up with the requirement of material sup-
port like money, food, medicines, clothes, shelter to mention a few. In
such cases, social workers are only required to provide clients with
the required help. This kind of problem gets resolves easily. The
social workers provide them this help from the money received from
a charitable trust, organizations, or individual. They usually do not
come to social workers on their own instead social workers have to
properly plan and organize events where they tell potential donors
about the cause and how they will use the donated money to help
people in need. Through the proper organization, they get resources
from people. Their task does not end here, after they also need to
properly and intelligently manage this pool of resources so that the
maximum number of people get benefit out of it.
Non-material help:If material help is about monetary and physi-
cal resources, non-material help is also about providing resources but
in abstract form. It is not about proving mental or emotional support
either. It means providing intellectual and knowledge support and
about changing physical environment where a client can take care of
itself. For example, if a poor child wants to study and there is no
proper facility available or there are no such conditions at home where
one can study, in such case social caseworkers may let the child study
at the community center where resources are available. There are
also instructors to provide proper guidance to the child. Thus, by
changing the physical environment the future of the child is now safe.
Another aspect of it is proving information or knowledge. Let's
understand it this way that there is a person who has the potential to
achieve great success in life but a person is kind of superstitious that
90 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

acts as a hindrance in the path of career. In such a case the social

caseworker is responsible for clearing out their doubts related to the
superstition and motivate the client that no superstition can stop them
from getting the life of their dream.
Counseling
The third kind of method as explained by Mathew is
[Link] is a behavior change strategy that involves di-
rect contact with the client and is by definition a treatment or remedial
process. It consists of numerous action plans undertaken in an or-
derly manner to bring in behavioral change in the client. Behavioral
change is motivated by a changed perception of the client. The changes
brought is as per the aims set by the client and the counselor. F.P.
Robinson (Pathare, 2010) defines counseling as helping people to
attain high adjustment abilities to demonstrate themselves as mature,
independent, with integrity and responsibility.
A counseling process requires a counselor and a counselee. A
counselor is a person who gives counseling, it is generally a social
worker in the case of social casework. Counselee is a person who
receives counseling and is also known as a client. Behaviour is learned
or influenced by the peer group or environment which may be good
or bad. If it is bad, then the counselee may develop some psychologi-
cal problems. Social casework aims at changing the behavior of coun-
selee which would lead a client to a normal life with their family mem-
bers and also at the workplace. The success of counseling depends
upon the communication skills of the counselor.
There can be various characteristics of the counseling given to be
different authors in a way they understood the concept. To mention a
few, the features of counseling are like
• It is a therapeutic process (Ludbrook, 2004) that is intended
to cure the condition of the client.
• It is face-to-face communication (Reggi, 2009) where coun-
selor and counselee have to meet in person. The counselor
not only observes the verbally communicated things but also
the things that are expressed non verbally.
 Tools and Techniques 91

• It is a supportive relation-building (Feilberg, 2014) as an ini-

tiation taken by the counselor is primarily intended towards
giving support to the client and build a friendly relationship.
• It empowers the client (Okoli, 2017) as the ultimate objective
of giving counseling is to make the client capable enough to
take decisions and the responsibilities associated with it.
Different Approaches to Counseling
Approaches to counseling mean the outlook of counselors to-
wards handling cases. Below-mentioned is three approaches that a
counselor follows while solving any case. Let's have a brief look at
them
• Directive Form: This is the counselor centric method, where a
counselor is supreme. He decides the outcome and take de-
cisions. In this method, the counselor talks more and the
counselee talks less. This form is based on the assumption
that the therapist’s experience is enough to deal with the client
(APA Dictionary).
• Non Directive Form: Here, the counselee is important. Coun-
selee talks more and takes a decision. Everything is done by
the client. The counselor is a listener. He is a motivator and a
facilitator, not a decision-maker. This is client-centered coun-
seling. Smith (1950) explains that counselors rather than solving
the problem provide the condition where the client themselves
work for their salvation.
• Co-operative form: Both the counselor and counselee have
equal participation. Both talk and takes decisions. Both ex-
change their thoughts and ideas and enjoy equal status. Both
interact well and understand issues in depth. It is not thus,
neither counselor nor counselee centric but the goal here is to
adopt a course of action tailored personally for the client
(Kabir, 2017). The client takes decisions and the counselor
will equally contribute and help the client to take appropriate
decisions.
92 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Counselling Technique
Techniques are the methods that a counselor uses while dealing
with the client. The approach of a counselor can be any but within
that approach what techniques are used affects the counseling pro-
cess. Let's look at the different counseling techniques generally used
by the counselors
Reflective discussion: It is like conveying back what you have
understood from the client’s words. It reflects the listening and ac-
ceptance attitude (Kumari, 2008) of the counselor. A counselor can
do it in numerous ways like paraphrasing what the client has said or
can summarize it. Reflecting feelings toward what the client has said is
also one of the ways. Catching their feelings and conveying or giving
words to the feelings of the client which they find difficult to express.
This usually happens that when someone gives appropriate words to
the feelings that one is not able to express, a kind of connection devel-
ops among them. Their person then expresses themselves freely and
franking. Even it allows the client to understand themselves better
with the expressed words.
Advice: It is one of the techniques of counseling. Here the social
workers tend to provide the client with such solutions that would help
the client to better their life. It is always said that give advice only
when someone asks for it. The same saying follows in the case of
social workers too. Therefore, it is all based on the skills of the social
worker that how they manage to advise client’s on their problem. The
general techniques used by the caseworker are through suggestions,
storytelling, sharing observations, questions to the client. It is more
based on the understanding of the client than how they take the words
of the counselor.
Motivation: By talking, discussing, or taking advice one may feel
like taking the required action to resolve their issues but it may not
convert to action in reality. In such a case social caseworkers moti-
vate the clients by telling them what benefits they may achieve by
doing any specific thing. For example, somebody suffering from any
health issues knows that doing exercise is beneficial for them, but they
 Tools and Techniques 93

fail to do exercise regularly. In such cases, social caseworkers pro-

vide them with motivations and prepare them mentally and emotion-
ally for taking any action.
Clarification: It means before taking any decision make the situ-
ation clear and comprehensible for the client. It always happens that
a person has a problem and it could not be efficiently solved only
because he do not have a proper understanding of the issue. For
example, after completing higher secondary board exams many of the
students are confused that what higher study they should opt for. In
such problems counseling is given to them regarding the courses avail-
able, they analyze every course in detail with their scope in setting up
their career. This way the student gets clarification with their problem
and is now able to take an intelligent and practical decision for their
life.
Correcting Perception: It is another way of counseling and it can
be said that it is an extended part of clarification. When the client is
now aware of the issue and the different facets related to it, their
perception of wrong gets corrected and now they can see the entire
picture with clarity. For example, in the earlier example, we have
seen how students are given career counseling in that case only as-
sume a student passed from a commerce background thinks opting
for C.A course, but then he thinks it must be a very difficult course to
pursue. In this situation, the counselor will tell the students regarding
all the aspects of C. A course, its difficulty level, and other things
which will gradually change the perception of a child for that course
and he may then decide whether to opt the course or not.
Phases of Counseling
Though various authors or social scientist has described phases
or stages of counseling in a different manner. As per one’s under-
standing, it may variate accordingly. According to Egan (2013) to
make the counseling procedure successful and effective, it has to pass
through the following stages or phases.
• Exploration stage: At this stage, the counselor explores the
94 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

inner thoughts of the counselee, in other words, the counselor

tends to know about the client. He understands the issue in
depth by putting appropriate questions at the right time. Mu-
tual acceptance and understanding, rapport building is pre-
requisite of this stage to start counseling. It establishes per-
sonal as well as professional rapport with the client. It helps
in establishing a positive and purposeful strategy for the up-
coming sessions. Patrick Nelson (2007) while explaining this
stage states that clients are a bit reluctant at this stage so the
counselor must help them to inspect a new perspective. The
counselor should also challenge their negative attitude of think-
ing and should help them constructively to overcome their
excuses, distortions, and low self-confidence.
• Planning stage: With all the data collected in the planning phase,
the counselor here utilizes them in a way to help the client to
improve their situation. The counselor develops an action to
be taken to bring behavioral changes to the client. This is
simply deciding in advance what has to be done, how, when,
and where it has to be done. While deciding upon these ques-
tions the information collected in the exploration stage plays a
significant role. The collected information guides while de-
ciding the course of action.
• Action stage: once the counselor has explored the problem
and its exact causes, the next step is to decide the plan of
intervention. Once all planning related things are sorted out,
the process of counseling reaches this third stage where the
counselor applies the decided course of action to solve the
problem. On the decided plans, actions are taken accord-
ingly hence it is called the action stage. Once the planning is
implemented the counselor seeks the appropriate steps if re-
quired in follow-up and try controlling the situation if it other
directions. The counselor must acknowledge the factors re-
lated to clients in advance before taking any action. Apart
from family and society, he should sensitively take the client’s
culture and traditions (Grey, 1996) also into account.
 Tools and Techniques 95

Counseling is important to maintain emotional balance. Coun-

seling plays an important role in solving a client’s problem. Pathare
(2010) views counseling as multidimensional as it is viewed as a rela-
tionship, therapeutic interventions, and psychological process. These
dimensions help caseworker to understand their client as well as their
problems. Counseling is viewed as a relationship as the nature of the
attachment between caseworker and client, and also the degree of
consensus on the approach of therapy (Miller and Duncan, 2004).
The improvement in the client’s condition is all based on the relation-
ship established between the counselor and the client. Thus, greater
emphasis has to be given to the kind of relationship building between
the two.
Counseling can also be viewed as therapeutic interference as
through the process of counseling, there is a motive to cure or heal the
client. Therapeutic in literal terms means medicinal, which is intended
to provide remedies to the health and psychological condition of the
client. It may take time to bring in some positive changes in behavior
but the conditions necessary to bring in these changes must exist there
for some time (Rogers, 1957).
The last aspect is the psychological process. Psychology is some-
thing related to the cognitive aspect of humans. The counselor has to
work on the cognitive part of the client to better their condition. Ev-
ery considerable idea established in social psychology in some way
has been applied to counseling (Strong et al., 1992). Through psy-
chology, the counselor tends to improve the client’s condition from
the root rather than just working on the surface.
3.4. SELF AS A PROFESSION
Self as a concept is a huge dimension of social casework. It is
about how an individual uses his own experience in dealing with people.
The self-concept brings in originality in the working of the social case-
workers. Whether a person stays at home or steps out accumulation
of experiences begins. They not only learn the basic social activities
but the crucial skill of dealing with people around. They learn through
guidance as well as through observation. People build up some per-
96 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

ceptions related to the environment. These perceptions keep on chang-

ing as we meet people, few people left a huge impact on people’s way
of looking at the world and as they grow older, these perceptions get
more organized, comprehensive, and definite (Pastorino et al., 2013).
The self-concept is all about the emotions, perception, and thought
process of an individual. It is all based on experiences, as there is no
self without experiences. It helps in developing the behavior of people.
Many a time people say ‘he is difficult to handle’, ‘he is very friendly’,
‘ he is introvert’ and many such things. These all are nothing but the
behavior developed from the inculcated perceptions and experiences.
How a person thinks about themselves gives an extra clue regarding
how to deal with them. Social caseworkers only need to observe
them. How continuously the social caseworkers are using this self-
concept or use "his or her motivation and capacity to communicate
and interact with others in ways that facilitate change" (Sheafor and
Horejsi, 2003, p.69) is the deciding factor in the expected result of
the interaction between client and social worker.
Self-Concept in Social Casework
How social caseworker uses this concept while dealing with the
client makes a great impact on their working and even results ob-
tained can be as effective as expected. The usage of self is all about
the knowledge base, values inculcated and skills learned by the social
caseworkers during their education regarding social work course. It
is the combination of an individual’s personality, characteristics, belief
system, life encounters, and cultural inheritance (Dewane, 2006). It is
this self-concept that gives genuineness and originality to the work of
social caseworkers as these are the unique characteristics specific to
every individual.
The knowledge base of the social caseworker is influenced and
improved by the cognizance of the below-mentioned areas (Chisom,
2015). These are the expertise areas that help in building the better
viewpoint and approach of social caseworkers towards the social
problems and their causes. Like
 Tools and Techniques 97

• Understanding of self
• Understanding of different social casework theories
• Understanding of human behavior, development, and social
environment
• Understanding of various fields of social casework
• Understanding of human individuality and diversity
• Understanding of latest research in the field of social case-
work
• Understanding social casework policies
• Knowing effective communication pattern
At this stage, confusion may burst out that why a social case-
worker needs to learn about the self. There is a simple answer to this
question, in earlier sections we understood how social caseworkers
help in realizing the self-confidence of the client to take up responsi-
bilities for their choices and decision. This not only boosts client con-
fidence but also helps them in realizing their life objectives. This is
only possible when the person guiding the client has a clear mind too.
There should not be any scope of pre-assumptions, stereotyping, judg-
ments in the mind of the counselor which may confuse the mind of the
client too. Thus the unclear mind of caseworker may pose a limit to
the principle of clients’ self-determination (NASW, 1999)
Caseworkers must be bias-free from all perspectives be it a per-
sonal or social belief system, values, experience, culture, and so on.
All these factors must not act as an obstacle while dealing with a
client. Having a per-assumption about the situation or a person does
not let people look beyond that perception. Thus social caseworkers
must be cautious enough to keep their perceptions aside while dealing
with a client.
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 99

Unit-4
Primary and Secondary Settings in
Social Casework
100 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 101

Chapter Overview

4.0 Primary and Secondary Settings

4.1 Application of Social Casework Methods in
• Family Settings
• Women Welfare Settings
• Child Welfare Settings
4.2 Application of Social Casework in
• Marriage Counseling Centers
• School Settings
• Medical and Psychiatric Settings
• Correctional Institutions
• Industry
102 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 103

4.0 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SETTINGS

Once getting equipped with the understanding of social case-
work, its different methods, and every other aspect of it, this section
deals with how the social casework is carried on in real-world sce-
narios. This sectional deals with the practical aspect of social case-
work.
Primary settings are the one that directly uses social casework
techniques like counseling centers. Where the agency is set up for
social casework only. Secondary settings are such where they are
not as frequently used as in primary setups like schools and industries.
4.1 APPLICATION OF SOCIAL CASEWORK METHODS
IN FAMILY, WOMEN, AND CHILD WELFARE SET-
TING
Let us see how social casework works under different setups.
The sections describe briefly the working of caseworkers in a family
setting, women welfare centers, and child welfare settings. Let’s un-
derstand these settings in a nutshell.
Family Welfare Settings
A family is a social group where people are related to each other
by blood or through marriage. The family group gives rise to various
other kinds of relationships in a society like religious groups, educa-
tional institutes, and others. In the words of Lamanna and Riedman
(2012), the family is an institute where a person takes their first step,
first time have the experience, first time feel joy and sorrows, and then
leaves the family to face a big world and its challenges. In social
casework family is given importance as it affects an individual a lot,
there is kind of needs be it psychological or emotional that can be
fulfilled only by the family (Eneh et al., 2017) also, a problem with
anyone in the family affects others as well. For example, an unhealthy
mother or father shall affect everyone in the family and everyone has a
responsibility towards them. It means that the environment of the
family is such which is about shared commitments, goals with trust,
and accountability (Constable, 2016).
104 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Family is a cyclic and continuous process where old mem-

bers die and new members are born and the system of family keeps
going on. The way family deals with the problems make a huge im-
pact on everyone also children's mental attitude is developed towards
facing problems. With so many people together make a family, and
the problems related to each one of them are also different. Thus, it
can be called a dynamic institution and a system (Rozario, 2020). It is
a system as it consists of many sub-parts that altogether form a fam-
ily-like father, mother, children, brother, sister, and others.
The social caseworker performs various roles while working in a
family-like a facilitator, guide, advisor, mentor, advocate, or catalyst
(Kanickairaj, 2020). They begin the case by collecting information
about why a person is this particular way, learns about the other fam-
ily member's behavior towards each other, and then accordingly ana-
lyze the situation to extend help. The social workers must keep in their
mind that the family is also about policies, processes, and programs of
the society (Briar-Lawson, 2016) so while analyzing the problem this
factor needs to be evaluated.
Women Welfare Settings
These are residual institutions for the women who have no other
place to live, a window, destitute, who has been abandoned by their
family or husband and also who are victims of crimes like women who
are dragged in prostitution and kidnapping. Gender is also one of the
issues that bring inequalities for women. Gender is a kind of socio-
cultural parameter that describes the roles of men and women in soci-
ety. The roles ascribed often lead to inequalities among the sexes
(Kiboro et al, 2014). Now encouraging equity and equality among
men and women is crucial to eliminate this overlook. Today this
marginalization is not only a human rights issue but also an important
aspect of sustainable development (Kemi and Jenyo, 2016).
The work of social casework here is basically to make these
women self-dependent and hold the responsibility of their life. They
are trained with vocational skills and are educated to make them ca-
pable for the available jobs. The abandoned women are given proper
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 105

counseling to make up their mental attitude to look forward in life.

They make them confident, independent, and empowered. The pros-
perity of women is important for the economic and social develop-
ment of all around the world. It is even now evident by its inclusion in
UN sustainable development goal no 5 that is promoting gender equal-
ity and the empowerment of women (United Nations Millennium De-
velopment Project, 2007).
The social workers work towards changing the culture re-orien-
tation and sensitizing the changes like gender discernment and stereo-
typing, promoting women’s human rights, support for the new laws
and women’s legal rights, empowering the women, gender balance
within key economic sectors, and promoting women’s political and
economic participation (Nnamma-Okechukwu et al., 2017).
Child Welfare Settings
Same as women's welfare setting, child welfare setting is also a
residual setting specifically for children who are below age 18.
Children's welfare setting is specialized and different from other wel-
fare settings because it involves involuntary clients (Verge, 2005) and
the practices here are mandated by law and the State. In these cen-
ters, children are moved out from the actual place where the problem
has originated and are kept here until the issue is completely resolved.
The involuntary client is those who hesitate while taking mental and
emotional support from others. The relationship between the child
welfare caseworker and the client is complicated and is difficult to
evolve than old clinical interventions (Drake, 1994). These welfare
homes have children who are suffering from any major health issues,
who are orphans, who fled their home, or also those who have com-
mitted any crime, where it become custodial care.
Social caseworkers here help the children to settle with the exist-
ing conditions and help them improve psychologically. Those children
who have suffered traumatic past are given due care psychologically
as well as emotionally. The function of caseworkers here is to safe-
guard children from every kind of harm, lessen the abusive exposure
and neglected behavior, and also provide other support services. The
106 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

primary focus is on providing therapeutic changes in children. Rogers

(1989) has pinned down six important conditions for such change.
These are
• Relationship between the client and caseworker
• Vulnerable state of the client
• The caseworker should be genuine and aware of the emo-
tions of people involved in the case as well as of the relation-
ship.
• The caseworker must warmly accept the client
• The caseworker must show empathy towards the client and
have effective communication with them.
• The client should also accept the caseworker’s empathy and
understanding
But in child welfare settings these conditions need not be fulfilled
strictly. The caseworker needs to persuade the child to feel open to
sharing their feelings with caseworkers. The empathy shown in the
cases makes the client feel they are being understood. Therefore, it is
contemplated as the basic component for therapeutic change (Nerdum
and Lundquist, 1995).
4.2. APPLICATION OF SOCIAL CASEWORK IN MAR-
RIAGE COUNSELING CENTERS, SCHOOL SET-
TINGS, MEDICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC SETTINGS,
CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTES, AND INDUSTRIES
This section deals with how social casework applies to the be-
low-mentioned settings like a marriage counseling center, schools,
medical and psychiatric centers, correctional institutes such as pris-
ons, and industries. Let's look at each of the sections separately and
in brief.
Marriage Counseling Centers
Marriage or marital counseling is about solving the issues be-
tween the husband and the wife. The problem can be of any type
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 107

which eventually affects the mental and emotional state of the client.
National Institution for Public Cooperation and Child Development
(NIPCCD, 2011) research studies identified a few problems com-
mon to every marriage. These are as follows
• Battered wife, bride burning, dowry
• Violent behavior of partners
• Egoism
• Addiction of any kind
• Abuse in all forms like physical mental-emotional
• Interference of in-laws in a personal matter
• Taunts and abuse
• Extramarital affairs
• Doubting spouse
• Insensitive behavior
Nowadays there are increased cases of divorce all over the world
because of the changing role of partners in a marriage. Now they are
not duly committed to the relationship, which makes it less difficult for
them to get out of it (Eneh et al., 2017). Social workers provide them
the necessary counseling to sustain their marriage.
According to Wharf (1957), the caseworker took interest in
marital conflict because of two reasons, which are
• Sometimes people get into the situation where they require
somebody’s help to live more satisfactorily
• Marital conflict is one of the chief reasons for family break-
down and traumatic childhood.
Therefore, the counselor here is not only solving problems be-
tween the two people but is securing a family from further break-
down. Foster (1953) defines the job of a marriage counselor as not
one where sick people are rehabilitated, but one where they need to
clear the matters related to misinformation and conflict with normal
people who have no mental issues.
108 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

School Settings
School is a setting where one gets a formal education. Every-
thing at school is pre-fixed like the syllabus, hours of study, mode of
study, etc. It is on well-established premises. It varies like primary
education for children up to class five, secondary education for chil-
dren up to class ten, and then it is higher secondary up to class twelve.
The curriculum is decided and advance, the teachers are given train-
ing regarding the same and it is taught accordingly to maintain the
standard same overall.
Now if everything is going on so easily in a well-determined man-
ner then what is the need for a social caseworker here in such a set-
ting. The education system now is only focused on memory instead of
learnings. The students are compared based on their marks and grade.
It makes students focus on marks and grades so seriously that men-
tally and emotionally they get exhausted while competing. In the age
of learning bearing so much pressure don not allow them to look around
at the other aspects of life, which is equally important for a human
being as their studies. In such cases where children start feeling de-
pressed and low social caseworkers’ role come into play as a coun-
selor and advisor about how not to take grades so seriously. Social
workers come in where the school teachers leave. The social case-
workers recognize the individual need of the child to resolves the is-
sues. Though it is a secondary setting for social caseworkers.
In such settings, social caseworkers act as educators, social plan-
ner, psychotherapist, and liaison (Wang, 2003). If we talk about the
objectives of social caseworkers in school set up Dash and Mohan
(2015) has mentioned the following objectives of social casework in
his paper Scope and challenges of social work in school
• Improvement and development of the environment of the
school
• Inclusive education with good infrastructure
• Analyzing abusive and neglect behavior. Taking actions ac-
cordingly
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 109

• Go for parents meeting, home visits

• Provide counseling
• Exposure tour for children
• Teaching life skills to students
• Career guidance
• Awareness program on scholarship facilities
• Pushing children for development following their learning ca-
pabilities
Medical and Psychiatric Settings
In medical facilities and psychiatric settings, the work of social
caseworkers is naturally quite indulging. As patients from all the fac-
ets of life are coming there from different age groups. The patient
managing capabilities of the doctors, nurses, and others are not only
limited to facilitators but also act as coordinators, counselors, motiva-
tors, mediators, etc. Handling old patients are different from handling
children or youngsters, so accordingly they have to change their meth-
odology concerning the patients which the caseworker understands
by the virtue of their knowledge, experience, and observations (Simon,
1946). Therefore, social casework is considered the primary method
in medical settings (Kumar, 2008).
In psychiatric settings, patients are those who are facing some
mental challenges or are emotionally disturbed. Caseworker (psy-
chiatrists) works one on one with the clients, their family, and some-
times they also visit their community to provide services (Sahu, 2013).
The social caseworkers in such settings act as a counselor to the pa-
tient, a mediator with family, and even after discharge of the patient
they take care of them afterward also.
Correctional Institutes
These include homes, special schools for the criminals, jails, de-
tention or remand homes, observation homes, beggar homes, and
others (Kumar, 2008). The people here are in constant conflict with
themselves and the process, they do not understand others as well as
could not express themselves well enough. Here the work of social
110 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

caseworkers is to make them realize that being a member of society

what kind of behavior is expected out of them. The caseworkers
train and guide them to behave accordingly and contribute construc-
tively to society. The persistent feeling of being inadequate or inferior
is what pushes these people to commit a crime and the work of a
social caseworker is to gradually and permanently change their per-
ception about the world out there. Here the caseworkers can be a
person or a team of a profession that constitutes psychiatrist, counse-
lor, educator, probation, or parole officers to mention a few.
Roy(2018) states what work social casework tends to do in correc-
tional settings. These are
• Mental and abuse counseling
• Rehabilitation for low-level criminals
• Helping people to restart their life. It transforms criminal into
an empowered human being who could contribute construc-
tively to society that is why the empowerment approach is
important (Severson, 1994)
• Change the criminal behavior of an individual.
• Advocating justice for criminal
• Advocating policies that will help inmates needs
• Working in juvenile courts and parole programs
• Working within society to eliminate the root cause of crimes
The caseworkers begin their work by understanding the causes
of underlying crimes and move ahead to correct them by bringing in
behavioral changes in people. Social-work participation with prison-
ers is a prerequisite learning for all social worker who astonishes why
caseworkers involvement is demanded there and what they do there
(Pray, 1943; Pray and Towle, 1945). Devasia(2008) defines five
basic assumptions that should be applied while working with an of-
fender. These are as follows
• Every individual has worth and dignity.
Primary and Secondary Settings in Social Casework 111

• The behavior of an individual, whether accepted by society

or not, expresses something about the need of an individual.
• If at right time, the right amount of help is provided to a per-
son can change his perception and behavior.
• The help should be provided logically before a person com-
mits a mistake. Here observation of the behavior of an indi-
vidual by the family and society becomes important.
• The family and society have a huge impact on the thinking and
behavior of a person. The personality of an individual devel-
ops in the early stage of the child. Thus, they should always
care about the impact they are making on others with their
behavior.
Social workers in correctional settings start the work by assess-
ing the new arrivals, based on the assessment they develop the treat-
ment plan for the inmates, the treatment includes therapy as well as
education. They take care of the inmate's physical and mental health,
monitor it, and keep a record of every patient (Roy, 2017).
Industries
Social work in industries can be understood as a systematic help
given to individuals and groups so that they can better adapt to the
work situation. The need for social caseworkers to get into industries
aroused when during the industrial revolution human beings were treated
as a means to get work done. Their mental and physical requirements
were completely ignored by employers. Therefore, the social work-
ers entered this domain to advocate the rights of workers welfare.
The interference has changed the working atmosphere of the workers
as now they were given better wages, better working conditions, bet-
ter leaves, and incentives to mention a few.
Cheeran (2015) mentions the basic objectives of social case-
workers interference in industrial setup are
• Help workers get a better work environment
• They act as a liaison between organizations and workers
112 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

• They take care of vulnerable groups like women among the

workers
• Apart from the better work environment, they help workers
to get flexible working hours
• Help develop work community through better induction and
orientation
• Help workers adjust and develop with the changing world
Apart from better working conditions and better pay, casework-
ers also help and counsel employees with problems related to age,
stress, violent behavior at the workplace, sexual or physical harass-
ment, health hazards at the workplace, mental health of employees,
unbalanced work-life to mention a few. Sehgal (2009) argues that if
industries carefully imply the social casework strategies in industries
then it would help workers with the problems like depression, anxiety,
alcoholism, family difficulties, drug abuse, marital problems. All these
problems when solved will automatically resolve the industrial issues
like frequent leaves, absenteeism, retirement, or job loss. It will im-
prove the discipline among the workers then they will themselves fell
motivated to work
 Social Casework Examples 113

Unit-5
Social Casework Examples
114 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Social Casework Examples 115

Chapter Overview

5.0 Case study on Alcoholism

5.1 Case study on Covid-19
116 Social Case Work Theories and Practices
 Social Casework Examples 117

5.0 CASE STUDY ON ALCOHOLISM

Let us understand the application of social casework through an
example of alcoholism. For the same, the approach and impact of
casework on an alcoholic person is included for further discussion. It
is evident from the piece of literature that drug abuse and alcohol
abuse are a growing trend in India. Further, alcoholism is a serious
and prevailing issue in contemporary society. Over the few years,
alcoholism is treated as a disease, though the concept is still new. In
accord with the drinking variability scale, all alcoholics pass over the
identifiable stage of illness (Ghosh et al., 2014).
As we have already studied the process of casework, let us un-
derstand the treatment of Vijay going through the same stages
Study
The story is of Vijay (name changed for confidentiality purposes).
Vijay lives in the city of Mumbai (changed place). He has a wife
Meera (changed name), who is a working woman, and a child Komal
(changed name) at home, her age is five years and she spends her day
in a nearby daycare center for children. Vijay is a chronic drinker.
Every day after office, he goes to the liquor shop and comes home
heavily drunk. When Vijay’s wife reaches out to the social case-
worker with her problem they collected little information about Vijay’s
past.
Here the client is Vijay. The caseworker before proceeding fur-
ther with Vijay first interviewed his family, which consists of her wife
and a daughter. The caseworker will also find that if Vijay has any
other person in his life as a close friend or other relatives which could
also be useful for the case.
The first step of the casework approach for rendering care to
alcohol and substance abusers is the identification of the abuser, though
the process of identification is not an easy procedure. There are very
few cases, where the employer, friend, family members, and/or the
abuser herself/himself may approach the social worker/health care
worker for help. In our case the client’s wife has taken an initiative
118 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

and has brought the client to the caseworker but here is the stigma
interlinked with the excessive drinking, shame, and guilty feeling due
to awareness absence and inapt usage about the part of drugs and
alcohol play a vital role in the issues they face-all the above-stated
feelings causes a phase of denial amongst the abusers. Additionally,
family members also attempt to protect their family’s dignity, for the
same deny the prevalence of this serious issue in their family. The few
pointers that can aid in the identification of alcohol addiction are-de-
teriorating job performance, poor quantity, and quality of work out-
put, frequent loans demand frequent association with accidents, and
bad interpersonal relationships. Further, addiction has an impact on
every member of the family including a spouse. The symptoms exist-
ing themselves in the spouse like suicidal attempts, bruises (because
of domestic violence), poor self-care, are a pointer of the husband’s
addiction. Furthermore, offspring can be victimized because of their
parent’s addiction. Continuous exposure to a bad environment can
lead to emotional trauma (Lewis, 2018). The above points can help
the caseworker to identify the prospect of alcohol and drug addiction.
Assessment
On interviewing his wife Meera, the caseworker collected the
following information
Vijay’s troubled childhood- Meera told her caseworker that
Vijay’s parents did not have good relationships with each other. His
father was also in habit of drinking alcohol a lot and was very violent
towards his mother and him. Regular beating by his father did not
lead Vijay to concentrate on his studies. His father died when he was
18. His mother was not in the condition to take care of him because
of which he started doing minor work and managed their survival.
Vijay’s work-life- By all the learning he made through experi-
ence, at the age of 25 he got a good sales job with a better salary. But
by that time his mother passed away. This deteriorated Vijay's situa-
tion more. He married Meera, who also worked at his office. Meera
knew about his drinking habit but was not aware that he is an addict.
She also told caseworkers that Vijay does not talk much and is never
interested in socializing.
 Social Casework Examples 119

Meera also told that it was very difficult to convince her husband
to come for the counseling. She also shared that he does not become
violent after drinking but his drinking habit is ruining his relationship
with Meera and Komal.
Then the caseworker decided to interview Vijay which was not
easy as her wife already told the caseworker about Vijay being less
talkative and do not socialize much. Before proceeding with the in-
terview the caseworker needs to build a good relationship with Vijay
by communicating empathy and making him trust the relationship with
the caseworker. For building a good relationship the caseworker
first, observed the behavior of Vijay that what stops him from talking
to others.
The tools used by the caseworker to deal with Vijay were Inter-
view, listening, observing, and building rapport with him. On counsel-
ing Vijay, his caseworker gets to know about his accumulated frustra-
tion and trauma that has impacted Vijay in his childhood is still there in
his mind. The memories of the past haunt him and he finds himself
guilty of not able to save his mother from all that happened. The
caseworker observed that being a child Vijay never went out of his
house because of the fear that the other children will make fun of him
as his father never gifts him anything, even at festivals, he used to
spend time alone in his room.
The caseworker explained to Meera about the mental status of
her husband and told her how family support is a must to cure the
condition of the patient. He told her to console his husband and talk
in a way that there is nothing to be ashamed of the past. If a human
being did not get proper guidance there are chances that we may get
into bad company. If we talk about alcohol consumption then once a
person starts drinking, there is no end to it and addiction not only
affects that person but also the whole house along with it. Therefore,
alcoholism is a paramount issue with global concern that requires ef-
fective intervention to deal with.
Furthermore, alcohol not only impacts the physical and mental
health of the individual, but it also impacts the folks who surround the
120 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

person (Asrani et al., 2020). Research has concluded that males are
largely associated with alcohol consumption as compared to females
in India. There are various factors for the large association of males
with alcohol consumption, such as, for few men drinking aids in re-
lieving stress, here, in case of Vijay also, he drinks because he felt that
it makes him forget his past, but that may further lead to a physical,
emotional, and social issue as Vijay then was ruining his relationship
with his family. Also, this becomes an additional stress source and
leads to lower the person’s confidence and self-esteem (Biddle et al.,
2020). In Vijay’s case, his disturbing relationship with his family is
becoming a reason for additional stress.
The report from WHO also contributed to the prevailing knowl-
edge base by expounding on the incidence of alcohol consumption.
Following the WHO report, approximately two million people glo-
bally consume alcoholic beverages and nearly 76% are diagnosed
with alcohol use disorder. While considering the public health out-
look, the global burden associated with the consumption of alcohol,
both in mortality and morbidity respect is considerable in a large part
of the globe. Consumption of alcohol is associated with negative so-
cial and health consequences through intoxication, biochemical ef-
fects, and alcohol dependence. Considering the above-stated fact,
the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, en-
dorsed de-addiction centers and government and private mental health
clinical setups to help the people with alcohol and drug addiction (Loan
et al., 2019). The de-addiction process includes identification of the
issue, intervention plan, and referral, followed by preventive efforts
and community mobilization.
Intervention
The next step in the process is the formulation of intervention
plans for the identified patient. During this process, the social worker
builds a connection with the patient, which can aid in fetching more
precise information. During the initial phase, the person may not ad-
mit that he/she has an issue with alcohol. The social worker must be
 Social Casework Examples 121

aware of the fact that the patient may be in fear or stress while thinking
of withdrawal. It is paramount to consider the inner barriers that can
prevent the patient from admitting his/her necessity for reaching out
for help. At this stage, the caseworker must converse with empathy
and consider not to be apathetic, accusatory, or judgmental(Nagrale
et al., 2018).
So once the caseworker makes Vijay convinced of his present
situation and how it is ruining his personal life, the caseworker may
adopt an appropriate technique to help Vijay come out of his situation
like through counseling, keeping sessions at a public place, making
Vijay befriend people on social media websites or in his locality, mak-
ing him go out with his family on weekends, making him join yoga
sessions or others.
In other cases, the addicted person usually comes for seeking
help only when he or she is facing a crisis like job loss, legal threat,
and marital dissolution (Nagrale et al., 2018). In such cases, the
social caseworker has a major role in motivating the person to accept
help by making use of their crisis. In such a scenario, the caseworker
must talk to the person when he/ she is not under the effect of any
substance. Moreover, it is vital to avoid labeling a patient an addict
and present a disease impression. The caseworker must list some
incidences occurred due to addiction, for instance, accident under the
influence of alcohol or drug.
Evaluation
Once the caseworker starts seeing improvement in the health of
the client he will devise measures to evaluate the performance of the
client. The social caseworker can play a vital role in rendering accu-
rate information about substance abuse to maximum people and help
them to make a practical choice for themselves. In accord with the
study conducted by Sathiaraj and Arjuna, (2015), group therapy is an
effective technique to improvising the wellbeing of substance depen-
dents. Therefore, group therapy can be rendered for addicts through
the exertions of the social caseworker. Lastly, Addiction is not a
concern of an individual; it starts as an individual’s issue, extends, and
122 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

converts into a communal problem. Because, it leads to insecurity,

theft, violence, and consequently, the whole society must be involved
in handling this issue. The endowed community has tremendous com-
mands to reform itself (Birtel et al., 2017).
So through measures like group therapy, the caseworker may
observe how Vijay reacts around people who have similar issues to
assess his present situation.
Termination
The main purpose of social casework therapy is to instill confi-
dence and hope in the person. After identification of the problem, the
caseworker must send the person for further treatment to the appro-
priate center by considering the individualized need of the patient
(Blakey, 2016).
Once the therapists at those centers evaluate and confirms that
Vijay’s personality, performance, and relationships are improving he
will terminate the treatment. Terminating treatment does not mean
that the relationship between the caseworker and patient is ended,
instead, the better version of the client now has a more profound
relationship with his caseworker.
Follow-up
One of the prime reasons for the alarming growth of this issue is
the lack of skill and knowledge to assert/resist oneself. Neither the
schools nor the family is so fortified to handle the addiction issue.
Therefore, follow-up is critical to keep delivering vital information to
the client about the prevailing conditions and for monitoring the be-
havior of the client that whether any other changes are surfacing in the
behavior of the client. This step is also important to maintain a record
of the client’s situation.
5.1 CASE STUDY ON COVID-19
The end of the year 2019 introduced us to the novel disease.
WHO (2020) named it SARS-CoV-2 that is commonly known as
Coronavirus. The virus reacts by affecting the human body that leads
 Social Casework Examples 123

to the respiratory system malfunctioning. The WHO called it a pan-

demic, as it has affected people around all over the world. If we talk
about the problems that the people are facing apart from health com-
plications are issues related to food, clothing, and shelter. Apart from
this conventional problem, the most dangerous problem is miscom-
munication (Sama et al., 2020) of the pieces of information related to
this virus. The vulnerable groups and poor were the ones who faced
a lot of problems during the lockdown period as there was no way left
for them to work and earn the money for the basic requirements and
because of the misinformation spread their life disturbed a lot. This
was the phase where social caseworkers came forward to help the
needy and the destitute.
The caseworkers not only give physical or material help but also
provided emotional and mental support to the people. Hearing mil-
lions of people dying everyday shattered the confidence and emotions
of the people everywhere. Someone, when in a family dies because
of the virus, their dead body was not even provided to the family to
stop the further spread of the virus (WHO,2020). Relatives of the
person who died could not even see the body and grief. These situa-
tions drained the people around the world emotionally and have
dragged them into a situation of depression. The social caseworkers
applied the counseling technique to help people come out from this
emotional trauma. National Association of Social Workers (NASW,
2020) while briefing the organization about the work of social work-
ers during these hard times also mentioned that tele therapy as a new
method to reach the largest possible people has been developed in
these times of pandemic.
As the disease was novel to the world and so the methodology
adopted by the workers also changed and adapted as per the on-
going situation. UNICEF (2020) has also analyzed the situation around
the world and has presented the changing roles of social workers in
times of pandemic. Figure 5.1 below gives a brief idea of their work.
124 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Figure 5.1 Role of social workforce during the time of corona

pandemic
(Source: as adapted from UNICEF)
Let us look at the story of Shushma (name changed for confiden-
tiality purpose), whose life was going all good, and suddenly how her
life changed because of this novel virus.
Study
Sushma, aged 28 married in a lower-middle-class family in Agra
(changed place). Her husband Mohan (name changed), aged 32 was
Compounder in a hospital. Shushma also had a 2-year-old son, named
Arun (name changed). Apart from them, there was Sushma’s mother-
in-law only. Mohan's father had died a few years ago due to pro-
longed chronic disease. With the continuous increase in cases in the
city, many people died of the virus. Sushma’s husband has also left the
world as he got infected with the virus leaving behind the family in an
extremely disturbing condition. Being the only earning member of the
family the financial condition of the family collapsed. Sushma started
taking stress as she had the responsibility of her son and mother.
Sushma’s habit of overthinking started to decline her physical and
mental health.
 Social Casework Examples 125

The various organizations and NGOs working in the city were

visiting every home, where anyone has died because of the virus. One
such caseworker visits Sushma.
Assessment
The caseworker began with condolence and being empathetic,
started to establish a friendly relationship with the Sushma. After talk-
ing for a while Sushma told the caseworker about her situation.
Sushma told the caseworker that when the cases began to in-
crease in Agra, the patients rose drastically in the hospitals of Agra.
Initially, the hospitals did not have all the basic infrastructure like PPE
kits, face shields, masks, and other similar things for their staff safety.
During the initial days only as evident, the workload of Mohan got
increased too. It made Mohan visit home less frequently. Now he
only visits home once a week. Within fifteen days the patient inflow
was so enormous that there was not sufficient space in the hospital to
accommodate every patient. Over time, Mohan also gets infected.
Initially, the symptoms were very mild, Mohan did not pay attention
and continued serving patients in the hospital. Gradually the symp-
toms surfaced, but by that time Mohan’s health deteriorated a lot. He
then was admitted to the hospital by the hospital staff only. As di-
rected by the authorities, the relatives of the patients were not allowed
to meet them. So the same happened with Sushma also, who had not
seen her husband for a week now and do not know when will she be
able to meet him. It was already ten days but no information about
Mohan’s health was communicated by the hospital. Sushma decided
to visit the hospital and see her husband for once. When she reaches
there, she gets to know that her husband died 2 days ago and the
hospital authority has already cremated him.
Hearing this Sushma fell unconscious. When she regained her
consciousness she could not control her grief. But also she could not
express her grief as the hospital authority told her to leave the place as
it is not safe for her to stay longer.
126 Social Case Work Theories and Practices

Intervention
After listening to the complete story of Sushma with patience and
empathy, first, the caseworker provided the material help to the family
in the form of food and ration. The caseworker also ensured Sushma
not to worry as they will take care of the needs of the family till the
lockdown period.
The caseworker also told Sushma’s mother in law that the orga-
nization will keep coming for the home visits and will provide all kind
of mental support to Sushma and will bring her back to life. Since
then the caseworkers keep visiting the home and counsels Sushma in
different ways. They made Sushma open up about her grief and let
her use her grief to push herself to do something for her family, as her
family is all dependent on her for their needs.
After giving a few counseling sessions, Sushma got out of her
pain and decide to do some job for her family. The caseworker instills
confidence and self-determination in Sushma so that she can take
responsibility for herself, her decisions, and her family. The case-
workers here also provided non-material assistance to Sushma. As
Sushma told them that before marriage she used to work as a Beau-
tician. The caseworkers managed a job for Sushma in a good beauty
parlor after the lockdown period has ended. Sushma began earning
money sufficient enough to fulfill the needs of her family.
Evaluation
The caseworkers after everything got smooth visited Sushma to
ask her about her feelings and how is she taking the situation. Sushma
thanked the caseworkers for all the support they had provided to her
and promised that she will work harder to make her son’s future bright.
The social workers while recording the cases of people also men-
tioned that this pandemic has emphasized the need for human rela-
tionships (Amadasun, 2020). Apart from building healthy relation-
ships the social workers also brought out the fact that the services that
they provide could never substitute economic development (Midgley
and Conley, 2010). Therefore, the services provided should be such
 Social Casework Examples 127

that could help the people to build their life strong so that in such
events, their lives do not flip badly.
Termination & Follow-up
As the behavior of Shushma showed that she has moved on from
her past and do not let her past to act as an obstacle for her future
growth, the caseworker marked the case of Sushma as completed
and keep visiting her home for the follow-up sessions at the regular
interval of time. The disturbing emotions can erupt anytime and the
caseworkers need to keep their clients confident and provide the ca-
pability with which they can cope up with these temporary feelings
without getting indulge in them. Golightley and Holloway(2020) in his
research paper ‘social work in the time of pandemic’ mentions the
importance of ‘nations, communities, families and individuals must dig
deep into resources and strengths which they may not realize they
have to make themselves capable enough to deal with any unseen
situation in the future.
 References 129

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