ABSTRACT
The Council on Social Work Education directs social work practitioners to complete a variety of tasks associated with the assessment formulation process. This chapter looks at how the theory savvy practitioner can use fourteen theories to develop explanatory hypotheses, provisional interpretations of the problem or the challenge faced by the person/system interacting in environmental contexts. It examines how the practitioner can use these theories to develop intervention hypotheses, statements about what might change the problematic elements of a client situation. Middle-range theorizing is another translation device useful during this part of the assessment process. Inquiry during the assessment process blurs into the intervention phase and the identification, selection, and implementation of an intervention work. Intervention hypotheses can be derived from theory-based if-then propositions. Multi-theoretical social workers formulate intervention plans that are based on more than one intervention hypothesis.
