Social Work: A Very Short Introduction by Sally Holland & Jonathan Scourfield

Author:Sally Holland & Jonathan Scourfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198708452
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2015-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

Box 10 ‘The client speaks’: listening to the experiences of service recipients

Over the years, service providers and researchers have begun to involve individuals more in providing feedback, and we can see some consistent and persistent strands in what service users say. In 1970 an early study of sixty-one clients’ views was published in the UK by Mayer and Timms, called The Client Speaks. Perhaps surprisingly, this was one of the first studies to ask recipients of services what they thought about social work and social workers.

They found that many users of a social work service got quite different help than they wanted. In general they wanted help with poverty and help coping with someone else (e.g. a husband or child). They were often offered help with their personal insight through talking therapies. Some were baffled by the social worker and did not understand what was being offered. The most satisfied clients were offered practical help in addition to counselling and therapy—a psychosocial approach.

The Client Speaks was published at a time when a distrust of traditional open-ended casework was growing. As has been seen in this chapter, more task-oriented measurable approaches became popular, and the rise of case management has discouraged open-ended therapeutic relationships—at least in the public sector.

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