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

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task-centered and generalist practice 5 Like the rationale for learning to be a generalist, the rationale for employing TC is based on several factors. First, it is in concert with many of the principles of generalist practice, including its problem- solving focus; openness to multiple theoretical orientations; and proce- dures that are transferable among a variety of systems, problems, pop- ulations, and settings. Second, TC has been tested and found effective with individuals and families. It is one of very few approaches to social work practice that can make this claim. Research findings will be de- tailed in the following chapters. Third, TC has been applied to work with all systems—individual, family, group, organization, and commu- nity. Fourth, it is relatively easy to incorporate interventions from other approaches into the TC framework. Examples of this will be provided in the following chapters. Finally, TC is consistent with the orientation that survey research has found to be most frequently used: “Thus, it appears that action-oriented and task-centered methods are increasing- ly being used to teach social work practice” (LeCroy and Goodwin 1988:47). Although TC has many advantages, we are not suggesting it is a magic bullet (were there a magic bullet, social workers would not be needed). Indeed, in some cases, the desired goals will not be reached; in others, no progress may be made at all. Rather, our argument is that, in most cases, TC should be the approach of first choice. The rationale for this position rests on (1) the advantages described in the preceding paragraph; (2) the literature on dropouts; and (3) the relative ease of moving from TC to other approaches, rather than vice versa. The literature on dropouts indicates that a substantial percentage of clients leave treatment prematurely, that the suspected cause in a num- ber of these cases is the lack of congruence between worker and client with respect to the focus of treatment or target problem, and that the drop-out rate might be lower in time-limited modalities. Since TC man- dates congruence on target problems and is time-limited, relying on it as the approach of first choice should enable us to engage more clients whom we might otherwise lose. With respect to movement away from TC, our experience has been that, when TC has been insufficiently effective, clients are generally amenable to trying other, more complicated, and more time-consuming approaches. We think this occurs because they have experienced for

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