ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the history of assessment and the importance of client goals and considers approaches and skills through the lenses of theory and diversity. It discusses the assessment of resources and explores approaches to pursue when resources are inadequate. The chapter also focuses on two areas of challenges for assessment and planning. It addresses a range of practice issues and skills related to assessment and planning along with a variety of difficult and challenging issues that exist in social work practice at present. The assessment and planning process begins right at the start of the social worker-client relationship when the social worker listens to the client's story and considers its meaning. To be a culturally competent practitioner, one must develop a set of "congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system or agency or amongst professionals and enable the system, agency, or those professions to work effectively in a cross-cultural situation".
