ABSTRACT
Social workers attempt to make helping goals explicit. Goals provide a direction to the helping work, increase worker and client accountability, facilitate productive discussions between trainees and supervisors, and make possible the evaluation of effectiveness. One way to translate theories into visions useful to goal setting work involves the construction of two theory-informed eco-maps, an eco-map of the current person- or system- in-environment configuration and an eco-map of the ideal configuration. Theory-based goals are general statements informed by a theory about the aims of the collaborative helping activities. Theories point to targets of intervention and thus help with goal setting. A worker and client might also take a multi-theoretical approach to goal setting. Multi-theoretical goal setting uses the major theoretical languages to generate and state images and verbal descriptions of ideal and desired outcomes for members and communities.
