ABSTRACT
For several decades a problem-solving paradigm has served social work practitioners, administrators, and researchers well, helping to organize, partialize, implement, and assess a variety of social work functions. The problem-solving paradigm in social work practice builds on a cognitive, rational view of the helping process. Most often problem-solving is perceived as an intervention that clears up, explains, resolves, or works out to result or conclusion a matter involving difficulty in setting or handling. In the normal course of social work practice, consumers of social work services identify or help a worker identify many problematic situations that are troubling them. The worker recognizes the episodic character of some problems, the chronic character of others. The characteristics of a growth process appears to hold the helping relationship intact and is associated with each phase of the problem-solving process. This growth process, however, is not adequately contained within the problem-solving paradigm.
