ABSTRACT
Social treatment or remedial service covers all manner of direct treatment methods—individual and family counseling, group treatment—as well as collateral actions on behalf of clients. These include interpersonal and emotional difficulties as well as situational problems. This chapter distinguishes differences in the strategies of macro and micro interventions. Macro intervention uses social action strategies, lobbying, coordination of functions, and canvassing; micro intervention typically relies on more circumscribed strategies directed at individual change: direct counseling, individual advocacy actions, and crisis intervention. Social treatment is an approach to interpersonal helping which utilizes direct and indirect strategies of intervention to aid individuals, families, and small groups in improving social functioning and coping with social problems. Professional helping has been distinguished from lay helping with respect to the professional's considerable expertise in determining what the problem is, deciding where to engage it, and how. Additionally, the worker roles of treatment agent, advocate-ombudsman, teacher-counselor, and broker of services and resources were identified.
