Changes in Casework Theory and Practice: Social Work with Groups

Until the 1950s there were hardly any studies of actual practice by British social workers. Accounts ranged from wide philosophical aims to why the office walls should be painted primrose. A standard book on probation ( Glover, 1949 ) spoke of fifteen-minute interviews as ‘probably sufficient for regular contact’ (p. 275). The ‘new’ casework superseded stereotyped assumptions about people’s behaviour in which social workers took their personal reactions at face value. In the 1950s they began to try to understand the reasons behind behaviour and to assess the situation in an orderly way before deciding how to use the relationship to help the client with his difficulties. At first American case records were used in seminars for practising social workers, but in time more British records were produced and, perhaps naturally, these were usually success stories, showing the effectiveness of the ‘new casework’ so that the need seemed to be for social workers to learn more of the same. The new knowledge from dynamic psychology was heady wine because it seemed to show the goal-directed nature of apparently irrational behaviour, even though some goals were self-defeating. Process recording of interaction with the client illuminated the processes of change over a period and the effect of accepting and respecting people rather than telling them what they ought to do or rebuking them for their behaviour.