Approaches to assessment and intervention
Learning Objectives
After considering this resource, you should have an awareness of different approaches to assessment and how they affect the power dynamics between social workers and service users.
Patterns of interaction with service users need to be properly understood otherwise they could hinder the process of collaborative and empowering problem-solving within a network of people. Social workers should develop an understanding of the nature of the particular social problem being tackled, and the feasibility of different kinds of solution and their possible consequences.
In this chapter, Gerald Smale, Graham Tuson and Daphne Statham discuss three different approaches to assessment (the Questioning model, the Exchange model and the Procedural model) and identify their relationship to different assumptions about the nature of the social work task.