Question

The development of a therapeutic relationship with a client is central to the clinical process founded both on the professional values and ethics of the social work profession.Explain the process and specific skills needed to developing a therapeutic relationship with a mandated client.

Answer 1

Development of a therapeutic relationship is central to the clinical process founded both on the professional values and ethics of the social work profession. Certain ethical and professional guidelines that help facilitating the clinical process social work practice are as follows:

1. Conscious use of self
2. Maintaining professional objectivity: Not getting overwhelmed by the concern to an extent that the objectivity to deal with it is lost in the process.
3. Respecting diversity: treating every client is equal without discriminating or having biases, judgements about anyone.
4. Seeking to enhance own professional competence: While one seeks to enhance own therapeutic skills to deal better with clients, one does indeed hone the skills of connecting with the clients. This is because the primary step to successful therapy is that one builds a workable rapport with the client, such that the client trusts the therapist & is yet empowered by the therapist to make own choices rather than engaging in dependency.
5. The case worker may also need to identify the type of clients that connect more rapidly to their unique practicing style. This can be discerned once more professional experience is gained and a wide variety of clientele is catered to by the therapist.
6. Client’s confidentiality is to be maintained during the professional alliance & at any time the client cannot be harmed by the actions or demeanour of the case worker.
7. The specific skills needed by the case worker are: building a rapport with clients, ability to identify patterns in responses, therapeutic techniques required to work with different kind of cases. For instance, CBT may be required for clients who have low self-esteem or distorted thought patterns. Normalisation (to make clients believe that they aren’t the only ones who face struggles), acknowledging the concerns, paraphrasing, summarizing, joint problem solving with the client by opting to be on the same pedestal as the client are some of the skills that are needed by a case worker. Enhancing the client participation & empowering the client is the larger skill needed by a therapist who is working a wide variety of clients.

The process therefore occurs in phases, wherein initially rapport building is aimed at. After this, the fact finding stage begins wherein all the information needed in order to begin working with the client needs to be surfaced. This also includes understanding the client within various systems such as family or other contexts such as cultural background. After the fact finding stage, once the bio-psycho-sociocultural factors are obtained, assessment phase has to begin wherein the case worker attempts to understand probable diagnosis of the client through various assessment techniques. Here, the primary concern, associated issues, dynamic disorder (current functioning) and aetiology (causes) are to be studies in elaborate detail. Thereafter, the aim should be to provide both direct & indirect interventions depending on the need of the client. The aim should be to empower the client as well creating a conducive environment for them to thrive in so as to maximise their potential.