Introduction

When I was first training to be a social worker, I used to ready the question, “what is a social worker?” I felt panicky as I thought I ought to be able to answer that question, but I could never come up with a good answer. This is in part because social work is practiced across a wide variety of settings; from care management to child protection, from child and adolescent mental health to forensic social work services. This means that the details of the job and the specific skills and theories used can vary widely from setting to setting. It is, however, possible to give a general sense of the process of social work – the things that almost all social workers do when they are practicing social work.

One of the most widely used, and I believe most helpful models of this is Carole Sutton’s ASPIRE model (Sutton, 2006, pp 84-129). It is important to note that although this model is highly relevant to social work, it is inter-disciplinary, being equally relevant for related professions, such as occupational therapy, health visiting, counselling, or community work (Sutton, 2006, p84). It is also important to note that the ASPIRE model was originally designed for helping families who were experiencing difficulties with their children’s behaviour. The model is however easily generalisable to other areas of practice.

The word ASPIRE is an acronym for the four main stages of the process:

• AS – Assessment
• P – Planning
• I – Implementation
• RE – Review and Evaluation

Whilst I think that Sutton’s model is very useful, and her 2006 book is a highly useful source for anyone seeking to work with children and families, I believe that the model is incomplete. You cannot Assess a person or family until you have formed a working relationship with them (Maclean et al, 2018, p 63). You also need to recognise that often involvement with social workers is highly disruptive in people’s lives, and the process of Assessing, Planning, Implementing, and Reviewing and Evaluating can stir up powerful feelings and have harmful effects on people’s lives, at least in the short-term. Social workers need to be aware of this and consider how they can disengage from the relationships with service users without leaving serious harm. For these reasons, I add two additional parts to the process. I also move these from Nouns (things) to Verbs (actions).

• Engage
• Assess
• Plan
• Implement
• Review and Evaluate
• Close

The reality is that these are stages, as implied by Sutton’s model, and there is no clear cut-off between them, in that as you Assess, you prepare to Close, and Plan, you Evaluate your plan. Instead, there is a general flow in your actions, in that you start by engaging, having engaged, you assess; you then use your assessment to help you plan, and you test your plan by seeing if you can implement it; having implemented you review and evaluate your implementation, and once you have achieved the results you wanted, you close the work with the person or family.

Parker (2013, pp311-320) offers a social work focused version with many similarities to the ASPIRE model.

Click on the images below to take you to the relevant section of the social work process.

Created by M. Allenby. Last update by M. Allenby – 11.01.21