Previous Page Next Page 
(c)  2025 Columbia University Press. All Rights reserved.

Generalist Practice: A Task-Centered Approach, Second Edition resources

Extracted Text (may have errors)

task-centered and generalist practice 3 Although these phenomena and others foreshadowed the develop- ment of a generalist orientation, it was not until the seventies that scholarly attempts to develop holistic practice approaches emerged. The first of them was Bartlett’s Common Base of Social Work Practice (1970). Volumes by Meyer (1970), Pincus and Minahan (1973), Gold- stein (1973), Siporin (1975), Morales and Sheafor (1977), Germain and Gitterman (1980), and Hartman and Laird (1983) followed. These efforts were particularly notable for developing two themes. One is the common knowledge or skill necessary for a “goal oriented planned change process” (Pincus and Minahan 1973:xiii) across the traditional specializations (casework, group work, and community organization) or the various system levels. A second theme is the relationship be- tween systems and their environments. Both the literature and the movement toward generalist practice continued into the 1980s culmi- nating in the curriculum policy statements of CSWE. In spite of many efforts, the generalist orientation has not been uni- formly defined or developed. In fact, there is disagreement about whether it is a model for practice or a perspective for practice. Sheafor, Horejsi, and Horejsi (2000) define a perspective as a way of viewing or thinking about practice: “The generalist perspective focuses a worker’s attention on the importance of considering . . . various levels of inter- vention (51).” A model (or an approach) for practice is, in contrast, a set of procedures that tell the practitioner what to do. Models for prac- tice are specific and often the result of research, whereas perspectives are general and testing their effect is very difficult, if not impossible. In spite of the definitional debate, a number of principles for generalist approaches have been articulated: 1. Incorporation of the generic foundation for social work and use of multilevel problem-solving methodology. 2. A multiple, theoretical orientation, including an ecological systems model that recognizes an interrelatedness of human problems, life situations, and social conditions. 3. A knowledge, value, and skill base that is transferable between and among diverse contexts, locations, and problems. 4. An open assessment unconstricted by any particular theoretical or interventive approach.

Help

loading