Clients Toward Whom a Social Worker Feels Attraction

The broad nature of the social work profession offers opportunities for practitioners to work with diverse clients. While committed to the welfare of all clients, social workers tend to be drawn to some clients more than others, due in part to their abilities to connect with them. A social worker’s positive feelings about his or her clients is a good thing, but it is possible that at times he or she will experience a special fondness or attraction for a client that can create biases that get in the way of a constructive working relationship. The purposes of this chapter are to explore the circumstances in which positive feelings about clients develop and to suggest ways for social workers to manage those feelings in a way that keeps their focus on the client’s welfare.

The Use of Self

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of the use of self, a process of developing self-knowledge that enables social workers to use their personal characteristics and experiences to enhance their work with clients. The social work profession requires that practitioners attend to drawing reflectively on the “self” in organizing their practices. Various methods are presented to help social workers realize how personal characteristics can influence their practice in both positive and negative ways. By learning to capitalize on their strengths, social workers can develop a more effective relationship-development style. Several case vignettes from students in their field placement are used to illustrate that process.

The Worker/Client Relationship in Technology-Assisted Interventions

While the effective delivery of technology-assisted interventions remains a challenge for many social workers, they can be quite helpful for clients, and it is evident that positive worker/client relationships are possible through these media. With the worldwide onset of the COVID-19 pandemic it has become almost mandatory that human service practitioners become competent in these forms of service delivery. Given the inevitability of ongoing developments in this area, social workers should embrace the opportunities afforded by online therapies. The purposes of this chapter are to review various types of distance interventions and examine their effects on the quality of worker/client relationships, including 12 recommendations for social workers to enhance those relationships.

The Working Alliance and Cross-Cultural Competence

The purpose of this chapter it to review the research-based concept of the working alliance, characterized by the forming of an emotional bond, worker/client goal consensus, and task collaboration, and to illustrate how it can be established and monitored by social workers. A related concept, that of cross-cultural competence, is also discussed. It refers to a social worker’s capacity and willingness to be attuned to a client’s culturally imbedded experiences, investigate the relevant details of that client’s experiences, and share with the client some of the social worker’s own relevant cultural experiences, to create mutual understanding. Cross-cultural competence facilitates the establishment of a working alliance.

Introduction

In the past few decades, in social work and other helping professions, there has been a significant movement toward establishing evidence-based practice (EBP) interventions for persons who experience a variety of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems. EBP interventions are those that have been empirically tested and found to be effective with persons who receive certain mental health diagnoses (...

Physical Contact in Relationships

Relationship encounters are characterized by both verbal and nonverbal behaviors, one of which is physical touch. Other than handshakes (perhaps), touch is considered in Western society to be a relatively intimate form of emotional expression, and as such tends to be used with caution. The potential benefits and dangers of non-erotic physical contact between social workers and their clients, including handshakes, hugs, holding hands, patting, and stroking, have been debated for decades. Some theorists and practitioners assert that touch, when done with discretion and consent, may promote a client’s positive change, while others caution that such contact, regardless of intent, risks being harmful to clients. The purposes of this chapter are to review the literature on the effects of physical contact between clients and practitioners on their working relationship and to provide 10 recommendations for social workers who consider engaging in such contact.

Relationship Ruptures

The social worker’s first task with clients is to develop a positive relationship, but as the intervention progresses he or she faces the ongoing challenge of sustaining that relationship so that the client can experience a positive environment for working toward his or her goals. As with all relationships, however, despite the practitioner’s best efforts, conflicts and misunderstandings may develop between the two parties that can threaten their bond and possibly undermine the work being done. The term relationship rupture refers to any event in direct practice that contributes to a deterioration in the social worker/client relationship once it has been positively established. The purpose of this chapter is to help social workers to become more skillful in identifying and repairing ruptures so that the relationship can resume in a productive direction.

Using Humor in Practice Relationships

People communicate their thoughts and feelings in many ways, one of which is through humor. Humor can be understood as a feature of any interaction that is intended to be amusing, and the desired result is a positive shared emotional experience that builds feelings of affinity. Thus, shared humor can at times positively affect the quality of a worker/client relationship. Using humor can be risky, however, because the kinds of issues social workers deal with are quite serious, and using humor in those contexts might be perceived as insensitive. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the benefits and risks of using humor as a means of positively advancing relationships with clients. The chapter also examines social workers’ use of gallows (or “backstage”) humor as a means of coping with their job-related stress.

Relationships with Children and Adolescents

The processes of forming working relationships with children and adolescents are often different than those with adults because of their physical, psychological, cognitive, emotional, and social stages of development. Additionally, they are at risk for many unique problems due to their dependency on and vulnerability to harm by adults. Their problems may be related to an absence of adequate family support and appropriate adult models, exposure to unhealthy social systems and traumatic situations, attachment issues, and difficulties with emotional regulation. Peer conflicts can also create distress for youth. Further, while children and adolescents are dependent on adults to get most of their needs met, they are often distrusting of adults, including social workers. The purpose of this chapter is to consider how social workers can engage with members of this population and develop relationships with them based on trust.

Relationship Boundaries

The concept of worker/client boundaries (the assumed and sometimes unspoken rules that people internalize about the physical and emotional limits of their relationships with others) is important to all types of social work. The various social work practice theories include different assumptions about appropriate boundaries and thus it is important to closely examine this concept. The major aspects of worker/client boundaries include contact time, the types of information that are appropriate to share, physical closeness of the parties, the range of emotions that is appropriate to share, and the physical space in which the interaction takes place. Both personal and professional boundaries and how they interact to influence relationships with clients are considered.