Problems, tasks, and outcomes

Through the 1980s, social workers still tended to plan their days and talk about their jobs in terms of individual cases, even though research had raised serious questions about whether that method worked. Many practitioners felt uncertain about their core role, what their work should accomplish, and how they should be trained.

Task-centred casework offered one answer to part of this problem. Its roots lay in an unexpected finding from an American study, and it departed from the older psychoanalytic model of casework. Its principles were a sharp sense of purpose, attention to how clients saw their difficulties, honesty about what both client and helper hoped to gain, and a shared plan for what would be done within a fixed period.

First published in 1985, this volume gathers three British investigations that accompanied, and in some ways led, the arrival of this method in the United Kingdom. The studies look at work with clients of social services departments, young people on probation, and adults admitted to hospital after deliberately poisoning themselves. They assess what the approach could and could not deliver, record how clients experienced it, and attempt to identify the skills it demands. The author also explains why many earlier social work studies had struggled to demonstrate that the profession was effective.

The book draws on extensive case material to show how task-centred methods operate and what results were seen from three viewpoints: those of clients, of social workers, and of an independent observer. It will be useful to practitioners, social work educators and students, and to anyone who wants social work grounded in evidence rather than anecdote or passing trends.