ABSTRACT
For most social workers, a behavioural approach is either viewed with extreme suspicion or embraced as the answer to a prayer. If wariness is the response, it is rarely because the worker has some intimate working knowledge of behavioural theory and its application. More usually it is because the sceptic holds the popular caricature of behaviourism as something mechanical, manipulative and malign. Yet in spite of its bad press, behavioural social work not only refuses to go away but has positively gained in strength and vigour.
