Federal, state, and local policymakers and funders have increasingly organized human service delivery functions around the selection and implementation of empirically supported interventions (ESIs), under the expectation that service delivery through such intervention frameworks results in improvements in cost-effectiveness and system performance.…

Examines current trends in data collection and information use in human services organizations. Describes issues for managers who are planning information systems, including practitioner resistance to automation. Proposes that conceptual integration of agendas for human services automation, practice evaluation, and service effectiveness enables…

Describes framework for stages of migration which helps workers obtain knowledge of needs, experiences, and circumstance of new immigrant groups and future newcomers. Notes that framework enables practitioners and organizations to examine relevance of previous immigrant group experiences and attendant service delivery patterns to current…

Proposes advocacy role for social work in form of clinical activist model. Notes that, in this model, clinician's role is that of data gatherer and analyst, in addition to therapist. Sees client as centerpiece of change, revealing to clinician types of systemwide changes or reforms that are needed. Briefly discusses structural changes necessary to…

Provides overview of case management, its history, and contemporary models. Examines challenges that case management poses for social work profession: covering up issue that health and human services delivery system is nonsystem; maintaining client-centered perspective in cost-obsessed environment; dealing with quality control; coping with…

Notes that since 1970, Volunteer Counseling Service of Rockland County, New York, has pioneered innovative use of community laypeople to do high-level counseling for clients with wide range of serious social problems. Gives the history and an overview of the mechanics and model of work that have made this agency feasible. (Author/NB)

Critiques problem-focused perspective, different diagnostic approaches, and objectivity-subjectivity dilemma as they apply to respecting client uniqueness. Social work practice is cast within reflective model advanced by Schon. Argues that this approach bolsters social work practitioner's ability to incorporate uniqueness in work with clients by…

Presents an analytical model for differentiating true clients from applicants in clinical social work practice. Society and the professions, and individuals and primary groups are discussed as structural determinants of clienthood. Social work practice is described as consisting of two major divisions: socialization and treatment. (NRB)

Examines creation of gay affirmative group model that focuses on unique social, developmental, and psychoeducational needs of lesbian and gay clients who attend psychiatric day treatment. Discusses how these clients' psychosocial potential can be maximized in group that addresses issues related to their sexual orientation including their double…