This work provides the specific guidance that students and new practitioners need in order to make sense quickly of the complex tasks of assessment and case planning in child welfare. The approach taken here targets the specific situations in the everyday life of a family that have caused that family difficulties. it utilizes a model combining the best of problem-focused relapse prevention approaches that evolved from work with addiction and violence, with solution-focused models that evolved from family systems therapy. By integrating the two approaches, treatment partnerships between family, caseworker, and service provider can be developed that account for safety and restore family members' pride in their own competence. The book flows out of a long practice experience, and was developed in consultation with workers and supervisors who were attempting to remedy problems viewed as contributing to recurrent abuse and neglect. It seeks to end adversarial relationships in casework, a hindrance to collecting information critical to assessing risk. It advocates case plans based on specific outcome skills rather than written with vague outcome goals measuring attendance in counselling.
It emphasizes the original, everyday life tasks that were causing the family difficulty, rather than losing them in the case after a while, leaving only compliance issues as a central concern. it serves as a common conceptual framework for integrating disparate segments of a response network, thereby allowing all providers in a therapeutic system to work towards common goals.