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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Fublication Data
Derezotes, David S.
Advanced generalist social work practice / by
David S. Derezotes.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8039-5599-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8039-5600-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Social service. 2. Social workers. I. Tide.
HV40.35 .D47 2000
361.3'2—dc21 99-6726
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Acquiring Editor: Jim Nageotte
Editorial Assistant: Heidi Van Middlesworth
Production Editor: Wendy Westgate
Editorial Assistant: Nevair Kabakian
Typesetter/Designer: Lynn Miyata
Indexer: Cristina Haley
Contents
Acknowledgments v
Preface and Introduction vii
PARTI
Assessment
1. Ecological Assessment 3
2. The Art and Science of Assessment 19
3. Issues in Advanced Generalist Assessment 29
PART II
Advanced Generalist Approach Interventions With
Individuals, Couples, Families, and Groups 45
4. A Practice Framework 47
5. The Inclusive Toolbox: Developing All of the Tools for the Job 59
6. Differential Eclectic Practice 71
7. The Helping Relationship: Integrity, Use of Self, Reciprocity,
Mutuality, and Multidimensionality 77
8. Ethics As Love, Connection, Awareness, Nonabusiveness,
and Justice 83
PART III
Intervention Paradigms: The Four Forces of Social Work 93
9. Psychodynamic Paradigm 95
10. Cognitive/Behavioral/Communications Paradigm 105
11. Experiential/Humanistic/Existential Paradigm 115
12. Transpersonal Paradigm 123
PART IV
Intervention Paradigms: Paradigms of Integration 143
13. Case Management Paradigm 145
14. Biopsychosocial Paradigm 157
15. Local and Global Community Paradigm 171
PARTV
Professional Self Development 199
16. Affective Development 201
17. Physical and Spiritual Development 213
18. Cognitive and Social Development 223
19. Transferences, Countertransferences, and the Multidimensional
Development of the Social Worker 229
Author Index 244
Subject Index 245
About the Author 253
Acknowledgments
T
here is insufficient space to acknowledge all of the people who have
inspired and supported my work, but my most significant acknowl
edgments can be noted here. My children, Nate and Taylor, are my most
important teachers. They continually remind me of the importance of com
munity, connection, spirit, and love. I need to thank Dr. Au-Deane Cowley,
James Magelby, and Dr. Tracie Hoffman, true colleagues who are whole
enough to support and welcome the success of others. I acknowledge other
valued mentors who believed in me and supported my own inclusive devel
opment: Florence Knopp, Dr. Roger Coulson, Reverend Jacob Weiss, and
Dr. Richard Barth. Finally, I thank Dr. Charles Garvin and Jim Nageotte of
Sage Publications, who believed enough in the project to give me the oppor
tunity to complete and publish the manuscript.
v
To my children,
Nate and Taylor Derezotes
Preface and Introduction
The Book
This book describes an advanced generalist approach to direct social work
practice with individuals, couples, families, and groups. The material is de
signed to be provided especially during the second-year MSW curriculum and
thus builds upon the generalist coursework provided to students in under
graduate and first-year MSW programs. Although the focus is on direct
practice, an ecological (person in environment) perspective is applied to all case
situations. Text endnotes provide the reader with resources for further study.
This text uses a "top-down"1 approach, based upon learning theory and
science, that recognizes that most students master complex material by first
gaining a broad understanding of the material and then specializing in selected
focus areas. Applied to social work practice, top-down learning suggests that
undergraduate and first-year MSW students gain a familiarity with the many
methods and populations they may encounter in practice. It is hoped that by
the end of the first MSW year, each student has learned basic competencies
applicable to practice with all of the major social work populations at risk. In
the second-year curriculum, students then gain a more in-depth understanding
of practice in selected methods and populations. By the end of the second
MSW year, it is hoped that students are beginning to integrate their new
knowledge, skills, and values into a personal practice style that the student has
learned to apply in his or her chosen specialty methods and populations.
Throughout the book, the term clients is used to describe the people whom
the social worker serves. The spirit of the book is to view clients not as passive
recipients of services but as vital partners in all social work practice situations.
Used less frequently, the term soul describes that primary essence of a person
that is recognized not only by many of the major religious and wisdom
traditions of the world, but also by many of the inventors of modern psychol
ogy, psychiatry, and social work.2 Gender bias is reduced through the alternat
ing use of gender-related pronouns throughout the text. A Transpersonalist 3
framework is used to help incorporate biogenetic, spiritual, and environmental
factors in the ecological assessment and advanced generalist intervention
strategies.
vu
viii ADVANCED GENERALIST SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
An Inclusive Approach to
Social Work Practice
In an era characterized by humanity's loss of connection with self, family, local
and global community, and natural environment, the effective social worker
needs an increasingly inclusive view of the challenges that face us today. An
inclusive view expands the traditional person-in-environment perspective to
also embrace the essential human need for connection with self and the world.
In social work, an inclusive perspective would maximize responsible choice by
enhancing the professional's ability to differentially select interventions from
the universe of available methods that fit the unique ecology of each diverse
case situation.
The most advanced theory is also the most inclusive; thus, inclusive social
work practice is advanced generalist practice because the social worker values
and uses both conventional generalist assessment and intervention strategies,
as well as alternative strategies drawn from a variety of cultures and traditions.
This inclusive strategy recognizes the diverse and ecological nature of human
life, in that each person is influenced by his or her own intricate internal
psychology, as well as by the complex social and natural environments in which
he or she lives. With the hundreds of practice strategies currently available to
the social worker, an inclusive practice approach is now possible that uses
combinations of approaches that match the unique ecology of each case.
The inclusive perspective embraces the many seemingly opposite positions
that now polarize social workers. For example, both direct practice with
individuals, couples, families, and groups, as well as indirect practice with
agencies, institutions, and communities, are valued as interrelated processes.
Both artistic factors (e.g., intuition and relationship) and scientific factors
(e.g., experiment and measurement) are used in assessment and intervention
strategies. Both public and private practice settings are viewed as legitimate
social work practice locations.
The inclusive approach also recognizes that both spirituality and science
are legitimate ways of knowing that may be used by any populations at risk
and by the social workers who serve them. Humanity's desire for connection
with self and world could be conceptualized as an expression of the spiritual
dimension of human development. Spirituality is viewed in this text as one of
the fundamental dimensions of human development (along with the physical,
emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions) and thus an important element
of human diversity. Whereas a religion is a social organization with shared
rituals and beliefs, spirituality is an individual growth process unique to each
person.
Recently, the social work profession has rediscovered the importance of
spirituality in practice. Although the social work profession had its roots in
religious-based charitable organizations, the profession then largely distanced
itself from spirituality as social work attempted to prove itself as a profession.
Preface and Introduction ix
Ironically, some of the professions that social work tried to emulate (e.g., psy
chology and medicine) have, in the past decades, led the way in showing the
empirical relationship between physical health, mental health, spirituality, and
the natural environment (the body-mind-spirit-environment connection) .4
The Council of Social Work Educators (CSWE), the leading accrediting
body for social work programs in the United States, affirmed the importance
of spirituality and religiosity in practice in their 1994 Curriculum Policy
Statement. Accredited social work programs are now required to include
spirituality and religiosity as elements of human diversity in BSW and MSW
practice curricula.5
Spiritual development, or the lack of such development, can also be
conceptualized as a key factor associated with most, if not all, biopsychosocial
problems. In general, our spiritual disconnection is associated with our current
imbalance of emphasis upon such life goals as power, wealth, and status rather
than upon whole-person, community-of-diversity, and ecological well-being.
Families, institutions, and communities that do not foster spiritual devel
opment are more likely to display such interrelated problems as poverty,
mental illness, substance abuse, violence, and excessive destruction of natural
resources.
Inclusive social work practice embraces the connections both within the
individual and between the individual and the larger world. From this perspec
tive, the individual's lifespan development ideally involves growth in each of
the interconnected physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and cognitive dimen
sions. A connection is also envisioned between the health of the individual,
the family, the community, and the natural environment.
The inclusive approach uses a mix of traditional social work methods as
well as alternative approaches drawn from a variety of professions or traditions.
As postmodern client populations continue to become more diverse, such a
mix gives social workers and their clients more choices from which to draw as
they seek strategies that best fit each unique case situation. More choices are
surely required in a world characterized by rapid change and a new millennium
of possibilities. Gender roles, marital expectations, vocational patterns, and
family structures continue to evolve swiftly. The nature of local and global
communities is also changing as human populations increase, economic and
political realities shift, and the natural ecosystem continues to deteriorate.
Finally, there is a global shift in what could be called conventional conscious
ness, in which increasing numbers of people are more aware of their intercon-
nectedness with each other and the natural environment.
Thus, we live in an exciting and frightening time, one that presents us with
both crises and opportunities for innovation. As a species, we are beginning
to recognize the interconnectedness between our souls and the universe, just
at the historical moment when not only our well-being but our very survival
on an increasingly crowded, hungry, polluted, and militarized planet requires
this awareness. Increasing numbers of people are calling for the co-creation of
perspectives and rituals that recognize the interconnectiveness of people and
