Data Collection and
Assessment
Basic Concepts
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Data collection is the activity of securing the information
needed to understand the practice situation as a
prerequisite to formulating a plan of action.
The worker should identify the subjective perceptions,
assumptions, and beliefs regarding the situation held by
the client, family members, teachers, employers, and
perhaps even a referring agency.
Assessment is the thinking process by which a worker
reasons from the information gathered to arrive at
tentative conclusions.
Basic Concepts
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The social worker should be able to describe the
problem accurately and identify what needs to
be changed to improve the client’s situation.
The best assessments are multidimensional.
Social workers must guard against
unconsciously making the client’s situation fit a
particular theory or a preconceived diagnostic
category.
Techniques and Guidelines For
Direct Practice
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Data-Collection activities that need to be
considered:
 Volitional:
the personal choices and decisions that
shape one’s life.
 Intellectual: the ideas, knowledge, and beliefs used
to understand oneself, others, and the world.
 Spiritual and religious: one’s deepest core beliefs
concerning the meaning and purpose of life.
 Moral and ethical: one’s standards of right and
wrong.
Techniques and Guidelines For
Direct Practice
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Data-Collection activities (continued):
 Emotional: one’s feelings and moods.
 Physical: one’s level of energy, ease and
capacity for
movement.
 Sexuality: one’s sexual identity and orientation,
libido, capacity for reproduction.
 Familial: relationships with one’s parents, siblings,
spouse, partner, children, and relatives.
 Social: interactions with friends and peers, one’s
social support network, one’s interest in recreational
activities.
Techniques and Guidelines For
Direct Practice
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Data-Collection Activities (continued):
 Community:
one’s sense of belonging to a
group beyond family and friends.
 Work/occupation: the nature of one’s work.
 Economic: one’s material resources; one’s
capacity to secure the money needed to
purchase goods and services.
 Legal: one’s rights, responsibilities,
protections and entitlements as a citizen.
Techniques and Guidelines For
Direct Practice
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Modes of data collection:
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Direct verbal questioning.
Direct written questioning.
Indirect or projective verbal questioning.
Indirect or projective written questioning.
Observation of the client in the client’s natural environment.
Observation of the client in a simulated situation (role playing).
Client self-monitoring and self-observations (journals and logs).
The use of existing documents.
Techniques and Guidelines For
Direct Practice
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Assessment activities requires developing a tool that
combines data collection with a format that facilitates
interpretation.
Particular attention needs to be given to assessing client
strengths.
Value preferences affect assessments.
There must be clarity as to who is the client and who will
be the target system.
Diagnosis means the client’s problem, condition, or
situation is classified and assigned to a particular
category.
Social Assessment Report
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A social assessment report is a type of
professional report frequently prepared by social
workers in direct practice that focuses on and
describes the social aspects of the client’s
functioning and their situation.
Social workers are particularly concerned about
the match between client needs and the
resources available to meet those needs.
Past behavior is the best predictor of future
behavior.
Social Assessment Report
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A social assessment report presents the reader
with two types of information:
 The
social data, consisting of facts and observations.
 The worker’s interpretation of those data along with
implications of the data for those who will work with
the client.
 The information presented should lay a foundation for
doing something with the client about their problem or
situation.
Social Assessment Report
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A good report is characterized by these qualities:
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Shortness
Clarity and simplicity
Usefulness
Organization (including):
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Identifying information
Reason for report
Reason for social work or agency
Statement of problem or situation
Statement of family background
Physical functioning, health concerns, illness, disabilities,
medications
Social Assessment Report
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Characteristics (continued):
 Organization (continued):
 Educational background, school performance, intellectual
functioning
 Psychological and emotional functioning
 Strengths, ways of coping, and problem solving capacities
 Employment, income, work experience and skills
 Housing, neighborhood, and transportation
 Current and recent use of community and professional
resources
 Social worker’s impressions and assessment
 Intervention and service plan
Social Assessment Report
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Characteristics (continued):
 Confidentiality
and client access (remember to
respect the client’s privacy).
 Objectivity: observations should be expressed in a
nonjudgmental manner.
 Relevance: The information should have a clear
connection between the client’s concern and the
social worker’s involvement.
 Focus on client strengths: Avoid preoccupation with
pathology, family disorganization, personal weakness,
and limitation.
Dual Perspective
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One of social work’s unique contributions is its
emphasis on understanding the client within the
context of their environment.
A person’s social environment is comprised of
two elements:
 The
nurturing environment is composed of family,
friends, and close associates at work or school.
 The sustaining environment is made up of the people
one encounters and learns to deal with in the wider
community
Dual Perspective
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Special concern during the assessment phase of
the change process is the question of whether
an intervention should be directed toward
elements of the nurturing environment or toward
the sustaining environment.
The concepts of a nurturing and a sustaining
environment can be translated into a simple
assessment tool for identifying the location of
both the supports and problems a person
experiences in the social environment.
Genograms and Ecomapping
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A genogram is a diagram similar to a family tree.
It describes family relationships for two or three
generations.
An ecomap places an individual or a family
within a social context by using circles to
represent organizations or factors impacting
their lives.
An ecomap is developed jointly by the social
worker and client and helps both to view the
family from a system’s or ecological perspective.
Social Support Assessment
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Social support refers to the information, encouragement,
and tangible assistance that if offered to a person, by
others, and is perceived by the person as being
beneficial to their functioning.
Social supports are a component of one’s larger social
network – those individuals and groups with which they
interact on a regular basis.
To help clients make appropriate and effective use of
social supports, it is necessary to engage them in
identification and assessment of potential social
supports.
Social Support Assessment
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This assessment do not objectively describe the
client’s support but rather reflect the client’s
perceptions and beliefs.
The social worker engages the client in a
discussion of how the client might reach out to
and use identified social supports.
Whether the supports are likely resources will
depend on the nature of the client’s problem or
needs and the client’s willingness to use them.
Life History Grid
The life history grid is a method of
organizing and presenting data related to
the various periods in a client’s life.
 The grid is especially useful in work with
children and adolescents, where an
understanding of life experiences during a
particular stage of development may shed
light on current functioning.
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Life Cycle Matrix
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An assessment should consider the client’s stage in the
life cycle and the developmental tasks common to that
stage.
The use of a matrix can help the social worker organize
thoughts about the family members and the physical,
psychological, social, and spiritual needs associated with
a particular stage of life.
Within a family system, the developmental struggles of
one member may interfere with the developmental tasks
and crises faced by another.
Identifying Client Strengths
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A client strength can be defined as an important,
positive, and prosocial action or activity that the
client is doing, can do, or wants to do.
To be successful, an intervention must be built
on and around client strengths.
Focusing on client strengths requires a
paradigm shift – a whole new way of thought
and analysis.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Examples of individual strengths:
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Assuming responsibility for one’s actions.
Taking reasonable risks in order to made needed changes.
Demonstrating loyalty and a sense of duty to family, relatives,
and friends.
Showing affection, compassion, and concern for others;
demonstrating a willingness to forgive others.
Assisting and encouraging others; protecting others from harm.
Seeking employment, holding a job, being responsible
employee, meeting one’s financial obligations.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Individual strengths (continue):
 Exercising
self control and making thoughtful
decisions and plans; choosing not to engage in
problem or self-defeating behavior.
 Being trustworthy, fair, and honest is dealing with
others.
 Experiencing true and appropriate sorrow and guilt;
making amends for having harmed others.
 Seeking to understand others and their situations and
accepting differences among people.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Individual strengths (continue):
 Willingness
to keep trying despite hardship and
setback.
 Participating in social, community, or religious
organizations and working to improve one’s own
neighborhood and community.
 Expressing one’s point of view and standing up for
one’s own rights and the rights of others.
 Making constructive use of special abilities and
aptitudes.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Important family strengths include:
 Members
 Members
trust, respect, and enjoy each other.
listen to and respect each other’s opinions
even when they disagree.
 Their communication is clear, positive, and
productive.
 The family has clear and reasonable rules that govern
behavior and interaction.
 Each member’s ideas, preferences, and needs are
considered before making a decision that would affect
the family.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Building on client strengths may require looking
at a client’s problems from a different angle.
Another way of orienting your approach to one
that recognizes and builds on client strengths is
to operate on the assumption that within all
people, there are innate tendencies toward
psychological health and prosocial behavior.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Guidelines to help the worker maintain a focus
on strengths:
 Believe
the client.
 Display an interest is strengths.
 Assume that the client is an expert on their behavior,
life, and situation, and knows best what will work in a
change effort or treatment plan.
 View the assessment and the service planning
process as joint worker-client activity.
 Assess but do not diagnose.
Identifying Client Strengths
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Guidelines (continue):
 Avoid
discussions of blame and what the client or
others should or should not have done previously.
 Assume that within the client’s family, social network,
and community there is an oasis of potential
resources, both formal and informal, that can be
drawn into the helping process.
 Formulate an intervention plan that is specific and
individualized to the client and their situation.
Expanding a Client’s Vision of
Changes That Are Possible
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The principles of solution-focused therapy
is to help the client detail descriptions of
those times and situations when the
problem did not have such strong negative
effects on their functioning and also to
encourage the client to imagine how they
would think, feel, and behave if the
problem would suddenly disappear.
Expanding a Client’s Vision of
Changes That Are Possible
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Techniques to implement changes:
 Exploring
exceptions refers to a type of questioning
intended to help the client realize that there are times
or situations when the problem is less frequent or less
intense.
 Scaling questions is designed to help the client
realize that the seriousness and the impact of a
problem varies over time and also that bringing about
desirable change is a matter of taking many small
steps, rather than making some large and sudden
shift in functioning.
Expanding a Client’s Vision of
Changes That Are Possible
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Techniques to implement changes (cont.):
 The
miracle question encourages the client to
visualize and describe what their life would be like
without the problem.
 Suggestions for asking the miracle question:
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Mark the beginning of the solution-building process clearly
and dramatically, by introducing the miracle question as
unusual or strange.
Since the question asks for a description of the future, use
future-directed words: What would be different? What will be
signs of the miracle?
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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A coping strategy is a fairly deliberate and
conscious effort to solve a problem or handle
personal distress.
An ego defense mechanisms is a habitual or
unconscious problem-avoiding maneuver.
Coping strategies have two functions:
 To
solve a problem (task-focused coping).
 To reduce the emotional discomfort cause by
stressors (emotion-focused coping).
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Emotion-focused coping strategies:
 Crying
 Talking
it out
 Laughing it off
 Seeking support
 Dreaming and nightmares (a common
reaction to traumatic experiences.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Task-focused strategies consist of deliberate and rational
actions that will likely bring about changes in one’s
functioning, one’s environment, or both.
Good task-focused strategies will be capable of
achieving these tasks:
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Express thoughts and feelings in a clear, positive, and assertive
manner.
Ask questions and gather new information, even when the new
information may challenge current beliefs.
Identify one’s personal needs and learn socially acceptable
means of meeting those needs.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Task focused strategies (continue):
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Model one’s behavior after persons who behave in an effective
and responsible manner.
Recognize that one does have choices and can exert influence
on one’s own behavior, feelings, and life events.
“cuts one’s losses” and withdraw from relationships or situations
that are unhealthy or stressful and unchangeable.
Examine the religious and spiritual dimension of life and draw on
one’s beliefs for insight, strength, and direction.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Task-focused strategies (continue):
 Identify
early signs or indicators of a developing
problem so action can be taken before the problem
becomes serious.
 Take positive and appropriate steps to solve problems
even when such actions are a source of fear and
anxiety.
 Release pent-up emotion in ways that do not verbally
or physically harm self or others.
 Take care of one’s body and maintain one’s health.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Task-focused strategies (continue):
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Delay immediate gratification in order to stick with a plan that will
attain a more distant but desired goal.
Use mental images of future actions or events to mentally
rehearse how to handle anticipated difficulties.
Make fair and appropriate changes in one’s daily activities of
living so as not to interfere with the needs of others.
Ignore unjustified criticism by others and remove one’s self from
situations that lead to self-defeating or harmful outcomes.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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If the assessment reveals that a client lacks
necessary coping strategies, the intervention
plan should focus on helping the client learn
specific coping skills.
Defense mechanisms are automatic
psychological processes that protect the
individual against anxiety and from awareness of
internal or external stressors or dangers. (DSMIV definition).
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Defense mechanisms are used to cope with
anxiety, stress, and the problems of living.
Defensiveness impairs a person’s ability to
accurately perceive reality and get along with
others.
The rigid or excessive use of defenses is a
barrier to realistic problem solving.
High levels of defensiveness and distortions of
reality are characteristic of disturbed
personalities.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Ego defenses:
 Denial
screens out certain realities by refusing to
acknowledge them.
 Rationalization involves the justification of
inappropriate behavior by manufacturing logical or
socially acceptable reasons for the behavior.
 Denial and rationalization are predominant defenses
used by people who are chemically dependent.
 Projection views others as being responsible for
one’s own shortcomings or unacceptable behavior.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Ego Defenses (continue):
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Repression refers to a mental process in which extremely
threatening and painful thoughts or experiences are excluded
from consciousness.
Emotional insulation is a maneuver aimed at withholding an
emotional investment in a desired but unlikely outcome. Used
commonly by persons who have grown up in extreme
deprivation.
Intellectualization involves the use of abstractions as a way of
distancing one’s self from emotional pain.
Regression involves a retreat from one’s present level of maturity
to one that has fewer demands and stressors. Common among
physically ill persons who are experiencing fear or pain.
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Ego defenses (continue):
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Reaction formation is utilized when a person defends against
troublesome thoughts, feelings, or impulses by rigidly adhering
to exactly the opposite set of thoughts and feelings.
Displacement refers to transferring troublesome emotions (often
hostility) and acting-out behaviors (violence) from the person
who arouses the emotion to another less threatening and less
powerful person or thing.
Fantasy refers to a person who daydreams imaginary
achievements and pleasant situations as a way of meeting
personal needs or counteracting painful feelings of inadequacy.
Acting out is a pattern of thought and behavior designed to
alleviate stress and inner conflict (not a true ego defense).
Coping Strategies and Ego
Defenses
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Guidelines to assist the social worker in assessing and
responding to a client’s defense mechanisms:
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You must look behind the surface behavior and identify and
address the unmet needs and pain that cause the client to rely
on the defense mechanism.
Defenses are mostly learned and habitual; an individual tends to
utilize those defenses they have used in the past.
People hold tightly to their defensive patterns
It can be difficult to tell where a true description leaves off and
rationalization begins
Assessing a Client’s Role
Performance
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The concept of social role derives from the observation
that within a society’s structure and institutions, certain
behaviors are expected of persons simply because of a
particular status or position they occupy in the society.
Role expectation suggests that for a given role, there is a
cluster of behaviors that are deemed appropriate and
acceptable by a reference group or by society as a
whole.
Role conception refers to an individual’s personal beliefs
and assumptions about how they are supposed to
behave in a particular role.
Assessing a Client’s Role
Performance
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An individual’s actual behavior while performing a role is
termed their role performance.
In order to successfully perform a given role, an
individual must possess certain knowledge, skills,
physical and mental abilities, known as role demands.
Inter-role conflict refers to an incompatibility or clash
between two or more roles.
Intra-role conflict exists when a person is caught up in a
situation where two or more set of expectations are
assigned to a single role.
Assessing a Client’s Role
Performance
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Role incapacity exists when an individual cannot
adequately perform a role.
Role rejection occurs when an individual refuses to
perform a role.
Role ambiguity exist when there are few clear
expectations associated with a role.
Self-role incongruence exists when there is little overlap
between the requirements of a role and the individual’s
personality.
Role overload exists when a person occupies more roles
than they can perform adequately.
Assessing a Client’s Role
Performance
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Questions can help the social worker analyze problems
of role performance and make decisions concerning the
type of intervention needed.
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What is the nature and degree of the discrepancy between
actual performance and role expectation?
Is the discrepancy caused by a lack of knowledge or skill?
If the discrepancy is caused by a lack of knowledge and skill,
how best can the problem be addressed?
If the discrepancy is caused by rejection or a lack of interest in
the role, how can the problem be addressed?
Assessing a Client’s Self-Concept
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The term self refers to that private world of
perceptions and thoughts that each of us has
about ourselves and our life experience.
This sense of self is of critical importance to our
social functioning because how we respond to
others and to events is strongly influenced by
how we think and feel about ourselves.
Self-identity is how we define and describe
ourselves to ourselves and differentiate
ourselves from other people.
Assessing a Client’s Self-Concept
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Self-efficacy has to do with our feelings of being
competent and effective and in control of our lives.
Self-worth (self-esteem) refers to our evaluation of our
own value or adequacy as human beings.
Self-acceptance can be thought of as the degree to
which we are satisfied and at peace with our qualities
and attributes, assets and limitations.
Body image refers to our perceptions and evaluations of
our own body and physical appearance.
Assessing a Client’s Self-Concept
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To a large degree, one’s sense of self is formed
during early childhood but experiences during
adolescence also exert a strong influence.
A person’s sense of self – one’s inner self- is an
element of spirituality meaning that deeply
personal thoughts and core beliefs have much to
do with the meanings we assign to our lives and
life experiences.
Assessing a Client’s Self-Concept
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To draw out this type of information, the
social worker can ask questions that are
organized around five common emotions:
 Who
and what do you love?
 Who and what have you lost?
 Who and what do you fear?
 How have you been hurt in life?
 Whom have you hurt?
Assessing Family Functioning
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A family will be defined as a group of persons
related by biological ties, a legal relationship,
and/or expectations of long-term loyalty and
commitment, often comprising at least two
generations and usually inhabiting one
household.
Furthermore, some of the adults of this group
must have the intention and the capacity to carry
out all or most of the activities or functions
common to a family.
Assessing Family Functioning
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As people create or join a new family, they tend
to repeat the behavioral patterns they learned in
the family of origin
When people live together for an extended
period, their interactions become habitual.
Once the patterns are well established, the
tendency is for family members to preserve the
status quo and repeat that which is familiar, even
when there are obvious problems in the family’s
functioning.
Assessing Family Functioning
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The social worker should keep in mind these questions
when gathering information about a family’s functioning:
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How is family membership defined?
What facts and realities describe the family?
Is family functioning supported by the community?
How well are family functions performed?
What are the boundaries, subsystems, rules, and roles
governing family interaction?
How well does each member fit within the family system?
Assessing Family Functioning
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Questions on family functioning (cont.)
 What
are the moral and ethical dimensions of the
family’s functioning.
 What aspects of life are considered beyond human
control?
 How does the family make decisions?
 What is the mood of the family?
 How do family members handle differentness?
 How clearly do family member communicate their
own expectations and needs?
 What communication patterns exist within the family?
Assessing Family Functioning
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Questions (continue):
 Do
family members allow other members to
get close emotionally?
 To what tasks and activities do the adults and
older children devote their time?
 What are the interpersonal payoffs of
troublesome behavior?
 Who supports and who opposes change?
Multiworker Family Assessment
Interviews
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Purpose is to secure an understanding of how
each family member views the family’s
presenting problem or concern by utilizing more
than one social worker during family interviews.
Benefits:
 A great deal of information is gathered.
 Family members feel they have been listened
and
understood.
 Consultants are now available to the primary social
worker.
The ABC Model and the Behavior
Matrix
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Tools employed to achieve greater precision in
the observation and analysis of client behavior.
ABC model: the A stands for antecedent, B for
behavior, and C for consequences.
Behavior Matrix is an observational tool that is
comprised of three cells that is designed to
collect data based on the social worker’s
observations of positive and negative behavior
patterns.
Both tools are utilized to modify behavior.
Using Questionnaires, Checklists,
and Vignettes
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A problem-checklist is a data-collection tool
designed to help the client identify and state
their concerns.
The checklist serves as an educational tool.
The purpose of a questionnaire is to help clients
quickly identify problem areas to be addressed
by the social worker.
A vignette is a brief story to which the client is
asked to respond.
Using Questionnaires, Checklists
and Vignettes
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Social workers underutilize these aids in their data
collection.
In developing your own tools consider:
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Be clear about the purpose to be served by the tool.
The completion of the questionnaire should be a relatively easy
task.
The writing of questions requires knowledge of possible
responses by clients to certain types of questions.
Each question should focus on a single idea.
Sequence of questions should follow a logical order.
A pretest should be used to determine whether clients can
understand all items in the tool, can complete it in a reasonable
amount of time, and the data obtained is useful.