ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on systems intervention undertaken on behalf of specific clients in the context of the social treatment relationship. Indirect helping in the context of social treatment might accurately be described as an attempt to put the "social" back into social work practice. For present purposes, indirect helping refers to all activities that the worker undertakes on behalf of the client to the mutually agreed-upon goals of the helping relationship. These may flow from a number of roles—advocate-ombudsman, broker of services and resources—and include a variety of functions. These functions encompass a number of specific interventions directed at any of the various social systems in which the client participates—family, peer groups, organization, community—for the purpose of enhancing individual change efforts. The practitioner is aware not only of the community's social services, but of the range of alternative helping services as well.
