ABSTRACT
Social caseworkers often find it difficult to commit themselves to an explicit assessment of their clients’ problems and they shy away even more from the formulation of treatment goals and methods. Referring patients to other agencies was not a matter of 'passing the buck', but clearly, as authors have said, the social worker could not have accepted everyone, even for assessment, had she not been able to use other facilities in the community. While preparing an interim report on the project early in 1968 it became clear that the social worker was classifying as clarification and assessment many cases in which her work had a definite therapeutic purpose and amounted to short-term casework. Since the authors could not find any ready-made objective criteria for assessing the outcome of social work, they were content with a simple classification of reasons for closure, a classification which had been found useful among clients of the London Family Welfare Association.
