In reading an article published in Social Work by Mattaini and Kirk (1991), I was happy to see the struggle that every social worker should be struggling with written in an article. The article focuses on assessment in social work practice. In this case, the authors focused on the initial assessment of client functioning rather than the assessment of client change. The authors point out that the primary forms of assessment in human services do not couple well with the values of social work. Many assessment techniques are rooted in a deficit model and seek to provide the practitioner and the client with a mental health diagnosis that will serve to drive the intervention forward. This mental health focus leaves little room to entertain the mezzo and macro disruptions that clients face. With the field of social work adopting the medical model, it is a case of working with what’s available based on general consensus.
Unfortunately, this model of preliminary assessment is so outside of the scope of social work that the tendency to overlook the guiding professional ethics and values seems more likely than not. As Mattaini and Kirk (1991) point out “classification systems can unintentionally or intentionally be used to distort phenomena” (p. 261). This concern can be traced back to practitioners having to take into account method of payment, what diagnosable condition will be allotted the most sessions, and other irrelevant concerns regarding social work intervention.
The article did a good job of presenting the view that if practitioners move forward with faulty initial assessment criteria, how then will they assess client change?
Mattaini, M. A. and Kirk, S. A. (1991). Assessing assessment in social work. Social Work, 36(3).
260-266.
Thank you for presenting this assessment perspective from the field of social work as this is a perspective that is not commonly presented. It is difficult to know how to intervene without knowledge of the individual's complete situation, the intervention process, and the follow up. In order to know where we are going, we need to understand where we are beginning. By examining the entire scope of this process we can help determine if there are things we can do to better identify initial needs and hone intervention efforts to better serve those needs. That effort is served through following up on the interventions to see how these strategies are carried forth by these individuals in their subsequent interactions, thus completing the loop.
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