ABSTRACT
Both practical and theoretical reasons have been put forward to explain the separate analysis of brief and extended intervention. The most pervasive, however, relates to the agency itself: the division reflects the way the agency defined cases, and hence the reality of the workers’ own experience of intervention. In addition to brief intervention, cases were allocated to the caseload of individual workers, either ‘short term’ or on a more long term basis. Short term cases were those generally expected to involve three or four visits following the initial assessment. However, boundaries were blurred as some short term cases developed into long term work, and those designated long term at times involved relatively few interviews. Some cases designated short term were not classified long term when additional interviews occurred because of the extra administrative work involved. Hence, caseload cases have been analyzed as a total group. Analysis of brief intervention created an intriguing picture: that, to a considerable degree, there was little difference in the role and behaviour of separate occupations (or combinations of occupations). The issue of occupational difference was not finally resolved, however, because of the brevity of the intervention. Further light may be thrown on the issue through more extended intervention. While the data on brief intervention were based on cases referred during a four month period, data on extended intervention involved cases referred over a one year period (see Appendix 1).
