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ASWB Flashcards

NASW Code of Ethics

The National Association of Social Workers' professional ethics standard. Its six core values — service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence — anchor most ASWB ethics items.

Self-determination

The client's right to make their own choices and direct their own life. Social workers promote it, limiting it only when a client's actions pose a serious, foreseeable, imminent risk to self or others.

Informed consent

The client's voluntary agreement to services after being told, in understandable language, the purpose, risks, benefits, alternatives, limits of confidentiality, and right to refuse or withdraw. It is ongoing, not a one-time signature.

Confidentiality

The duty to protect client information disclosed in the professional relationship. It is limited by mandated reporting, duty to protect, client consent, and court order — limits the client is told about up front.

Privileged communication

A legal protection (held by the client) that keeps therapeutic communications from being disclosed in court without consent. It is narrower than confidentiality and has statutory exceptions such as abuse reporting.

Duty to warn / duty to protect (Tarasoff)

When a client makes a serious, imminent threat against an identifiable victim, the social worker must take reasonable protective steps — warning the victim, notifying police, and/or arranging hospitalization. It overrides confidentiality.

Mandated reporting

The legal duty to report reasonable suspicion of abuse or neglect of a child, elder, or dependent adult to the proper authorities. It requires suspicion, not proof, overrides confidentiality, and is time-limited by state law.

Dual / multiple relationship

A second role with a client (social, business, sexual) beyond the professional one that risks impaired judgment or exploitation. Sexual relationships with current clients are always prohibited; other dual roles are avoided when harm is foreseeable.

Boundary crossing vs. boundary violation

A boundary crossing is a benign or even helpful deviation from the usual frame (e.g., a home visit); a boundary violation is harmful or exploitative (e.g., a sexual or financial relationship). Context and client impact distinguish them.

Conflict of interest

A situation in which a social worker's personal, financial, or professional interests could compromise professional judgment or client welfare. The worker discloses it and takes steps to protect the client's interest, even ending the relationship if needed.

Competence (scope of practice)

Practicing only within one's education, training, license, and supervised experience. Social workers seek consultation, supervision, or referral when a case exceeds their competence.

Cultural competence / cultural humility

Delivering services responsive to clients' cultures and an ongoing, self-reflective stance that recognizes the worker's limits and the client as the expert on their own experience. The NASW Code requires culturally responsive practice.

Termination (ethical)

Ending services appropriately — when goals are met, when the client is not benefiting, or on referral — with reasonable notice and continuity planning. Abandonment (abrupt, unplanned ending leaving a client at risk) is an ethical violation.

Abandonment

Terminating a client abruptly or without adequate notice, referral, or continuity of care while the client still needs services. It is an ethical and sometimes legal violation, distinct from a planned, justified termination.

Documentation standards

Records must be accurate, timely, secure, and sufficient to ensure continuity and accountability — including consent, assessment, plan, progress, and risk. Records protect both client and worker and are kept and disposed of per law.

Client self-determination vs. paternalism

Social workers respect clients' right to make their own decisions even when the worker disagrees, intervening over the client's wishes only to prevent serious, foreseeable, and imminent harm.

Ethical decision-making model

A structured process — identify the dilemma and stakeholders, consult the Code and law, weigh options and consequences, choose and act, then evaluate. Used when values or duties conflict (e.g., confidentiality vs. safety).

Privacy vs. confidentiality

Privacy is the client's right to control disclosure of personal information; confidentiality is the worker's duty to protect information the client has shared. Privacy belongs to the client; confidentiality is the worker's obligation.

Informed consent with minors

Minors generally cannot give legal consent; a parent or guardian usually consents while the minor gives assent. Exceptions (e.g., emancipated minors, certain reproductive or substance-use services) vary by state law.

Confidentiality with couples and families

When multiple people are seen, the worker clarifies up front who the client is and how secrets shared individually will be handled (a "no-secrets" vs. limited-confidentiality policy), and obtains all parties' consent to release records.

Limits of confidentiality

Confidentiality may be breached for mandated reporting of abuse, serious imminent danger to self or others, client consent, court order, and supervision/consultation. Clients are informed of these limits during informed consent.

Social justice (core value)

A core NASW value: pursuing social change on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed people, addressing poverty, discrimination, and unequal access to resources. It links micro practice to macro advocacy.

Dignity and worth of the person

A core NASW value: treating each person as inherently worthy, respecting diversity and self-determination, and balancing clients' interests with the broader society's in a socially responsible way.

Self-disclosure (worker)

Sharing the worker's own information with a client. Used sparingly and only for the client's benefit (e.g., to normalize or build alliance), never to meet the worker's needs; over-disclosure blurs boundaries.

Gifts from clients

Accepting gifts is evaluated for cultural meaning, value, timing, and impact on the relationship. Small, culturally meaningful tokens may be accepted; valuable gifts are generally declined to avoid a boundary or dual-relationship problem.

Supervision (ethical responsibility)

Supervisors are responsible for the quality of supervisees' work and for setting clear, appropriate, professional boundaries. Sexual or exploitative relationships with supervisees are prohibited.

Interruption / transfer of services

Social workers plan for continuity when services are interrupted (illness, relocation, unavailability), making reasonable arrangements so clients are not left without needed care.

Technology and ethics

Electronic and online services require the same standards: informed consent about the technology's risks, verifying identity and jurisdiction, protecting electronic records, and managing professional boundaries on social media.

Impairment and self-care

Social workers monitor their own functioning; when personal problems, substance use, or stress impair practice, they seek help and limit, suspend, or end work to protect clients.

Confidentiality after a client's death

The duty of confidentiality generally continues after a client dies; the worker protects the deceased client's information and follows law and the Code regarding any disclosure.

Right to refuse treatment

Competent clients may refuse services or specific interventions. The worker ensures the refusal is informed, documents it, and intervenes against the client's wishes only to prevent serious, imminent harm.

Professional vs. personal values

Social workers do not impose personal values on clients. When personal beliefs conflict with serving a client, they seek consultation and, if they cannot serve effectively without imposing values, make an appropriate referral.

Bartering for services

Accepting goods or services instead of a fee is generally discouraged because it risks a dual relationship and conflict; it may be acceptable only when it is the community norm, not exploitative, and the client requests it.

Release of information (ROI)

A signed, specific authorization that lets a worker share otherwise confidential information with a named party, for a stated purpose, for a limited time. The client may revoke it; it is required before most disclosures.

Informed consent for recording

Audio or video recording, or third-party observation, requires the client's specific, voluntary, informed consent in advance — including how the recording will be used, stored, and destroyed.

HIPAA (Privacy Rule)

Federal law protecting the privacy and security of protected health information. It sets minimum standards for use, disclosure, and client access to records; state law or the Code may be more protective and then governs.

Reporting colleague impairment or misconduct

When a colleague is impaired, incompetent, or unethical, the worker first addresses it through appropriate channels (consultation, the colleague, then licensing boards or professional bodies) to protect clients.

Advocacy

Acting with or on behalf of clients to secure resources, rights, and services. Case advocacy helps an individual; cause (class) advocacy seeks systemic change for a group, reflecting the social-justice value.

Confidentiality in group work

Members cannot be legally bound to keep group disclosures private, so the worker explains the limits of group confidentiality up front and seeks an explicit member agreement to maintain it.

Capacity vs. competence

Capacity is a clinical judgment that a person can understand and make a specific decision; competence is a legal determination by a court. A client may have capacity for some decisions and not others.

Mandated client (involuntary)

A client referred by a court, agency, or other authority who may not want services. The worker clarifies what is and is not voluntary and confidential, builds engagement, and respects self-determination within the mandate.

Duty to a third party

Beyond Tarasoff, social workers may owe duties to identifiable third parties (e.g., reporting certain communicable-disease risks where law requires), balancing client confidentiality against foreseeable serious harm.

Fees and financial arrangements

Fees must be fair, reasonable, and clearly disclosed in advance. Social workers do not solicit private fees from agency clients, exploit clients financially, or let inability to pay end services abruptly without referral.

Confidentiality and consultation

When consulting colleagues or supervisors about a case, the worker shares only the information needed and, when feasible, protects the client's identity. Consultation is a recognized, appropriate use of client information.

Six core values of social work

Service; Social justice; Dignity and worth of the person; Importance of human relationships; Integrity; and Competence. They head the NASW Code of Ethics and frame every standard.

Court-ordered disclosure

When a court orders disclosure, the worker may first assert privilege and request that the court withdraw or limit the order; if the order stands, the worker discloses the minimum necessary and documents the process.

Biopsychosocial assessment

A structured assessment gathering biological, psychological, and social/environmental information to understand the client in context. It is the foundation of social work assessment and treatment planning.

Person-in-environment (PIE)

The defining social work perspective: understanding a person within their interacting environments — family, community, culture, and systems — rather than as an isolated individual.

Mental status exam (MSE)

A structured snapshot of a client's current functioning: appearance, behavior, speech, mood/affect, thought process and content, perception, cognition (orientation, memory), insight, and judgment.

DSM-5-TR

The American Psychiatric Association's current diagnostic manual. Clinical social workers use it to diagnose mental disorders, integrating diagnosis with a person-in-environment, strengths-based view.

Differential diagnosis

Systematically distinguishing among disorders with overlapping symptoms (and ruling out medical causes and substances) to reach the most accurate diagnosis before planning treatment.

Suicide risk assessment

Evaluating ideation, plan, means, intent, prior attempts, hopelessness, recent loss/stressors, substance use, and protective factors. Risk level drives the response, from safety planning to hospitalization.

Protective factors

Conditions that lower risk — social support, reasons for living, religious/cultural beliefs against suicide, problem-solving skills, engagement in care, and responsibility for children. They are weighed against risk factors.

Genogram

A graphic map of a family across three or more generations recording members, relationships, and patterns (marriages, deaths, illness, conflict, cutoffs). It surfaces multigenerational patterns for assessment.

Ecomap

A diagram of a client or family's connections to outside systems (work, school, church, agencies, friends), showing the strength and quality of each tie — a person-in-environment assessment tool.

Strengths perspective

An approach that assesses and builds on client and environmental resources, resilience, and competencies rather than focusing only on deficits and pathology. The client is the expert on their life.

Presenting problem

The issue the client states as the reason for seeking help. The worker explores it while assessing for underlying or related concerns the client may not name first.

Collateral information

Information gathered from sources other than the client — family, records, other providers — with appropriate consent, to corroborate and round out the assessment.

Risk vs. protective factors

Risk factors increase the likelihood of a problem or harm; protective factors reduce it. Assessment weighs both, and intervention strengthens protective factors while reducing modifiable risks.

Attachment theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth)

The theory that early caregiver bonds shape relational patterns. Ainsworth's styles — secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant, and (Main) disorganized — inform assessment of relationships and trauma.

Erikson's psychosocial stages

Eight stages, each a developmental crisis (e.g., trust vs. mistrust in infancy, identity vs. role confusion in adolescence, integrity vs. despair in late life). Used to assess developmentally expectable tasks and conflicts.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Lower needs are generally addressed first; useful for prioritizing — basic needs and safety before higher-order work.

Piaget's cognitive stages

Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. They guide age-appropriate assessment of reasoning and the developmental fit of an intervention.

Stages of change (Transtheoretical Model)

Precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance (and relapse). Matching the intervention to the client's stage — e.g., motivational interviewing in early stages — improves engagement.

Defense mechanisms

Unconscious strategies that protect against anxiety — e.g., denial, projection, displacement, rationalization, sublimation, regression. Recognizing them informs psychodynamic assessment.

Trauma-informed assessment

Assessing while assuming a possible trauma history, asking sensitively, prioritizing safety and trust, and avoiding re-traumatization. It shifts the question from "what's wrong with you?" to "what happened to you?"

ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)

Early abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction that are dose-dependently linked to later physical, mental, and behavioral health problems. A higher ACE score signals elevated risk.

Substance use assessment

Evaluating quantity, frequency, pattern, consequences, tolerance, withdrawal, and readiness to change — using tools like CAGE or AUDIT — and screening for co-occurring mental health conditions.

Co-occurring (dual) diagnosis

The presence of both a mental health disorder and a substance use disorder. Integrated, simultaneous treatment of both is more effective than treating them separately or sequentially.

Treatment plan

A collaborative document stating the problem, measurable goals, specific objectives, interventions, responsible parties, and timeframes. It flows from the assessment and is reviewed and revised over time.

SMART goals

Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. They make a treatment plan concrete and let progress be evaluated objectively.

Homeostasis (family systems)

A family system's tendency to maintain its familiar balance and resist change; a member's symptom can serve to keep the system stable, which explains resistance when the member improves.

Identified patient

The family member who carries or expresses the symptom and is presented as "the problem," though the symptom often signals dysfunction in the whole system.

Triangulation

Drawing a third person into a two-person conflict to lower tension (e.g., a child pulled into marital conflict). It stabilizes the pair short-term but locks in dysfunctional patterns.

Boundaries (family)

Implicit rules defining who participates in a subsystem and how. Boundaries range from rigid (disengagement) through clear (healthy) to diffuse (enmeshment) in structural family theory.

Crisis (assessment)

A state in which a person's usual coping is overwhelmed by a stressor, producing disequilibrium. Crisis assessment focuses on the precipitating event, the client's perception, supports, and coping, plus safety.

Lethality assessment

Determining how dangerous a suicidal or violent situation is by evaluating the specificity and feasibility of the plan, access to means, intent, and history — to choose the level of intervention.

Standardized assessment tools

Validated instruments (e.g., PHQ-9 for depression, GAD-7 for anxiety, Beck scales, Mini-Mental State Exam) that quantify symptoms and track change; used to supplement, not replace, clinical judgment.

Cognitive distortions

Habitual, inaccurate thought patterns — all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, overgeneralization, mind reading, personalization — identified in assessment and targeted in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Bio-psycho-social-spiritual model

An expansion of the biopsychosocial assessment that also considers spiritual and cultural meaning, recognizing faith and worldview as resources and as context for the client's experience.

Object relations theory

A psychodynamic theory holding that early relationships are internalized as templates ('objects') that shape current relating. Used to understand recurring relational patterns.

Risk of harm to others assessment

Evaluating ideation, target, plan, means, intent, history of violence, and substance use to gauge dangerousness — which may trigger duty to protect and shapes safety planning.

GAF / level-of-functioning

An assessment of how well a client is functioning across psychological, social, and occupational domains. Though the DSM-5 dropped the GAF axis, functional impairment remains central to assessment and planning.

Cultural formulation

DSM-5-TR's framework (the Cultural Formulation Interview) for assessing how culture shapes a client's identity, the meaning of distress, stressors and supports, and the clinician-client relationship.

Concrete vs. abstract needs

Concrete needs are tangible (housing, food, income, safety); abstract needs are psychological/relational. Social workers often address pressing concrete needs first, since unmet basic needs block other work.

Prioritizing during assessment

Safety first (suicide, violence, abuse), then basic survival needs, then the presenting problem and longer-term goals. The order reflects both ethics and Maslow's hierarchy.

Symptom vs. syndrome vs. disorder

A symptom is a single sign of distress; a syndrome is a cluster of symptoms that occur together; a disorder is a syndrome meeting diagnostic criteria with distress or impairment.

Cognitive development across the lifespan

Assessment must fit the client's developmental stage — concrete play and behavioral methods with young children, identity and autonomy themes with adolescents, generativity and integrity themes with older adults.

Resilience

The capacity to adapt well in the face of adversity. Assessment identifies the relationships, skills, and resources that support resilience so intervention can strengthen them.

Mood vs. affect

Mood is the client's reported, sustained emotional state ('I feel down'); affect is the observed, moment-to-moment emotional expression (e.g., flat, blunted, labile, congruent). Both are noted in the MSE.

Insight and judgment

Insight is the client's awareness of their problem and its causes; judgment is their capacity to make sound decisions. Both are rated in the mental status exam and inform the plan.

Diagnosis and stigma

A diagnosis guides treatment and access to services but can also label and stigmatize. Social workers diagnose accurately while framing the person, not the disorder, and keeping a strengths and context lens.

Therapeutic alliance

The collaborative, trusting bond between worker and client. It is one of the strongest predictors of outcome across all therapy models and is built through empathy, genuineness, and positive regard.

Empathy

Accurately understanding and reflecting the client's feelings and experience from their frame of reference. A core Rogerian condition that builds the alliance and supports change.

Unconditional positive regard

Carl Rogers' nonjudgmental acceptance of the client as a worthwhile person regardless of their behavior. With empathy and genuineness, it forms the core conditions of person-centered therapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

A structured, present-focused approach that links thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It targets cognitive distortions and maladaptive behaviors through techniques like cognitive restructuring and behavioral activation.

Cognitive restructuring

A CBT technique that identifies, challenges, and replaces distorted automatic thoughts with more accurate, balanced ones, changing the feelings and behaviors that follow from them.

Behavioral activation

A CBT/behavioral intervention for depression that schedules and increases rewarding, value-based activities to counter withdrawal and improve mood.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)

Marsha Linehan's evidence-based treatment (originally for borderline personality disorder) blending acceptance and change. Its four skill modules are mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

Motivational interviewing (MI)

A client-centered, directive method that resolves ambivalence and strengthens intrinsic motivation to change. It uses open questions, affirmations, reflections, summaries (OARS), and 'rolls with resistance.'

Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT)

A brief, goal-directed model (de Shazer and Berg) that builds on exceptions and strengths rather than problems, using the miracle question, exception questions, and scaling questions.

Miracle question

A solution-focused question asking the client to imagine the problem solved overnight and describe what would be different, eliciting a concrete picture of the preferred future and achievable first steps.

Scaling question

A solution-focused question asking the client to rate something (e.g., confidence or progress) on a 0-10 scale, making change measurable and identifying small next steps.

Exception question

A solution-focused question exploring times the problem was absent or less severe, to uncover existing strengths and solutions the client can do more of.

Narrative therapy

A postmodern approach (White and Epston) that helps clients re-author the stories they live by, using externalizing the problem and identifying unique outcomes that contradict the problem-saturated story.

Externalizing the problem

A narrative technique that separates the person from the problem ('the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem'), reducing shame and restoring the client's sense of agency.

Psychodynamic therapy

A treatment that brings unconscious conflicts, defenses, and early relational patterns into awareness. It uses interpretation, exploration of transference, and insight to free the client from repeating patterns.

Transference

The client's unconscious redirection of feelings about important past figures onto the worker. Exploring it (in psychodynamic work) can reveal and resolve relational patterns.

Countertransference

The worker's emotional reactions to the client, often rooted in the worker's own history. Recognized and managed (via supervision and self-awareness), it can be a useful clinical signal rather than a liability.

Crisis intervention

A brief, active, present-focused approach that restores a person's pre-crisis equilibrium: ensure safety, assess the precipitant and meaning, mobilize coping and supports, and plan concrete next steps.

Safety planning

A collaborative plan with an at-risk client listing warning signs, coping strategies, supportive contacts, means restriction, and emergency resources. It is preferred over a 'no-suicide contract,' which has no evidence base.

Structural family therapy

Salvador Minuchin's model focusing on the family's organization — subsystems, boundaries, and hierarchy. Techniques include joining, enactment, boundary making, and unbalancing to restructure the family.

Enactment

A structural technique in which the worker has family members interact in session to reveal their real-time patterns, then intervenes to restructure boundaries and hierarchy.

Bowenian (multigenerational) therapy

Murray Bowen's approach centered on differentiation of self, triangles, emotional cutoff, and multigenerational transmission, using genograms and detriangling to lower reactivity across generations.

Strategic family therapy

A brief, problem-focused model (Haley, Madanes) using directives, reframing, and paradoxical interventions to interrupt the 'attempted solution' that maintains the problem.

Reframing

Offering a new, often more relational or positive, meaning for a behavior or situation to shift how the client sees it and open the door to change.

Paradoxical intervention

Prescribing the symptom — directing the client to continue or exaggerate the behavior — to interrupt the pattern by removing the struggle against it. Used carefully and never with dangerous behavior.

Group therapy

Treatment in a group format that uses interpersonal feedback, universality, and modeling. Yalom's therapeutic factors (e.g., universality, instillation of hope, group cohesiveness) explain why groups help.

Yalom's therapeutic factors

Curative elements of group therapy — including universality, instillation of hope, imparting information, altruism, group cohesiveness, interpersonal learning, and catharsis — that drive change in members.

Case management

Coordinating services across providers and systems — assessing, planning, linking, monitoring, and advocating — so a client's multiple needs are met. Central to social work's person-in-environment role.

Discharge / continuity planning

Arranging follow-up care, referrals, and resources before services end so gains are maintained and the client is not left without support. It begins early, not at the last session.

Psychoeducation

Teaching clients and families about a condition, its treatment, coping skills, and resources. It normalizes experience, builds skills, and improves engagement and adherence.

Evidence-based practice (EBP)

Integrating the best available research, clinical expertise, and client values and preferences to choose interventions. It makes practice accountable and improves outcomes.

Exposure therapy

A behavioral treatment for anxiety and trauma that gradually and safely confronts feared stimuli (in vivo or imaginal) so the fear response extinguishes. Used in PTSD, phobias, and OCD.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, an evidence-based trauma treatment that uses bilateral stimulation while the client processes traumatic memories to reduce their distressing charge.

Trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT)

An evidence-based treatment for children and adolescents with trauma symptoms, combining CBT skills, gradual exposure (a trauma narrative), and caregiver involvement.

Termination phase

The planned ending of treatment when goals are met and gains can be self-maintained. The worker consolidates change, reviews progress, addresses feelings about ending, and plans relapse prevention.

Relapse prevention

Identifying triggers and high-risk situations and rehearsing coping strategies so the client can maintain gains and respond to setbacks without full relapse, especially in substance-use treatment.

Active listening

Fully attending to the client and reflecting content and feeling back, using paraphrasing, summarizing, and clarifying. It builds the alliance and ensures accurate understanding.

Open vs. closed questions

Open questions ('Tell me about...') invite elaboration and exploration; closed questions elicit specific facts ('How old are you?'). Skilled interviewing leads with open questions.

Confrontation (clinical)

Gently pointing out a discrepancy between the client's words, feelings, or actions to increase awareness. Used with a strong alliance and care, not as criticism or attack.

Reflection of feeling

Mirroring the emotion underneath the client's words ('It sounds like you felt abandoned') to convey empathy and help the client recognize and process feelings.

Task-centered practice

A short-term, structured social work model that breaks a client's target problem into specific, agreed tasks completed between sessions, building momentum and competence.

Crisis vs. ongoing therapy

Crisis work is brief, directive, and aimed at restoring stability and safety; ongoing therapy is longer-term and explores patterns and growth. The worker matches intensity to the client's current state.

Mindfulness-based interventions

Treatments (e.g., MBSR, MBCT) that cultivate nonjudgmental present-moment awareness to reduce rumination, stress, and relapse in depression and anxiety.

Family psychoeducation in serious mental illness

Educating families about a serious mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia) and reducing high 'expressed emotion' (criticism, hostility, over-involvement) lowers relapse and improves outcomes.

Harm reduction

An approach that meets clients where they are and reduces the negative consequences of behaviors (e.g., substance use) without requiring abstinence as a precondition for help.

Person-centered (client-centered) therapy

Carl Rogers' nondirective model holding that empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard create the conditions in which clients move toward growth and self-actualization.

Solution-focused vs. problem-focused

Solution-focused work amplifies what already works and the client's preferred future; problem-focused work analyzes causes and the problem itself. SFBT deliberately spends little time on the problem.

Working with resistance

Viewing 'resistance' as ambivalence or a protective response rather than defiance. The worker rolls with it (MI), explores its function, and adjusts pace and approach rather than pushing harder.

Empowerment practice

Helping clients gain mastery and a sense of control over their lives by building skills, access to resources, and self-efficacy, and by addressing the systemic barriers that disempower them.

Referral and linkage

Connecting a client to services beyond the worker's scope or agency — making the referral concrete, following up, and ensuring the client actually connects rather than just handing over a phone number.

Phases of the helping relationship

Engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, and termination. Social work treatment moves through these stages, and the alliance is built and maintained throughout.

De-escalation

Techniques to reduce an agitated or aggressive client's arousal — a calm tone, respectful space, validation, simple choices, and removing triggers — to restore safety without coercion.

Grief and loss work

Helping clients process loss; models like Kübler-Ross (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and Worden's tasks of mourning guide the work, recognizing grief is nonlinear and individual.

Worden's tasks of mourning

Accept the reality of the loss; process the pain of grief; adjust to a world without the deceased; and find an enduring connection while moving forward. A task model of grief work.

Service (core value)

A core NASW value: helping people in need and addressing social problems is placed above self-interest; social workers draw on their knowledge and skills to assist others, including some pro bono service.

Integrity (core value)

A core NASW value: behaving in a trustworthy, honest, and responsible manner, acting consistently with the profession's mission and values and the Code of Ethics.

Importance of human relationships

A core NASW value: relationships among people are a vehicle for change; social workers engage clients as partners and seek to strengthen relationships to promote well-being.

Whistleblowing / reporting unethical practice

When informal channels fail, a social worker reports serious unethical or illegal practice to licensing boards, NASW, or other authorities to protect clients and the public, weighing the harm and the duty to act.

Confidentiality vs. minor's safety

A worker generally keeps a minor's disclosures confidential to build trust but breaks confidentiality — and may inform a guardian — when there is serious, imminent risk such as suicidality or abuse.

Ethical use of research and evaluation

Social workers obtain voluntary informed consent from participants, protect their identities and well-being, avoid conflicts, and report findings honestly when conducting or using research.

Misrepresentation

Social workers represent their credentials, competence, and affiliations accurately and do not claim qualifications they lack; doing so is an ethical violation that endangers clients.

Termination because of nonpayment

A worker may terminate for nonpayment only if it does not pose an imminent danger to the client, the financial arrangement was clear, and the client is given referrals and reasonable notice.

Sexual relationships with former clients

The NASW Code generally prohibits sexual relationships with former clients because of the risk of harm and exploitation; the burden is on the social worker to justify any exception, which is strongly discouraged.

Confidentiality and electronic records

Social workers take reasonable steps to protect the confidentiality of electronic records and communications, including secure storage, access controls, and informing clients of the risks of electronic media.

Duty when client refuses needed care

When a competent client refuses recommended care, the worker documents informed refusal, continues to engage and offer alternatives, and intervenes against the client's wishes only to prevent serious, imminent harm.

Professionalism in court testimony

When testifying, social workers tell the truth, stay within their competence, distinguish facts from opinions, clarify their role (treating clinician vs. forensic evaluator), and avoid dual forensic/clinical roles where possible.

Macro ethics (organizations & policy)

Ethical duties extend to organizations and society: advocating for adequate resources, fair allocation, nondiscriminatory policies, and conditions that support clients' dignity and access to services.

Confidentiality of consultation about a client

Even when sharing a case for supervision, the worker discloses the least information necessary and protects client identity when possible; the client is told that supervision/consultation occurs.

Conflicts between law and ethics

When a law or agency policy conflicts with the Code of Ethics, the worker makes the conflict known and works responsibly to resolve it consistent with the profession's values, never simply ignoring the Code.

Theories of human behavior

Assessment draws on multiple lenses — psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, family systems, ecological, and developmental — to understand a client; no single theory fits every case.

Ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner)

A framework viewing development within nested systems — micro, meso, exo, and macro — that interact. It operationalizes person-in-environment for assessment.

Microsystem / mezzo / macro levels

Micro practice is with individuals and families; mezzo with groups and organizations; macro with communities, policy, and society. Assessment and intervention can target any level.

Operant conditioning

Skinner's principle that behavior is shaped by its consequences: reinforcement (positive or negative) increases a behavior; punishment decreases it. Used to assess and modify behavior.

Classical conditioning

Pavlov's learning by association: a neutral stimulus paired with one that triggers a response eventually triggers it alone. It explains phobias and conditioned anxiety.

Positive vs. negative reinforcement

Positive reinforcement adds a pleasant stimulus to increase a behavior; negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus to increase a behavior. Both increase behavior — neither is punishment.

Kohlberg's moral development

Stages of moral reasoning from preconventional (avoid punishment) through conventional (social rules) to postconventional (principles). Useful for age-appropriate assessment of judgment.

Temperament

A child's inborn behavioral style (e.g., easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up). 'Goodness of fit' between temperament and the caregiving environment shapes adjustment.

Developmental milestones

Expected physical, cognitive, social, and emotional achievements at given ages. Significant delays signal the need for further assessment and possible referral.

Domestic / intimate partner violence assessment

Screen privately and directly for current safety, the pattern and escalation of abuse, lethality indicators (threats, weapons, strangulation), and the client's plan; prioritize safety and the client's choices.

Power and control wheel

A model depicting how abusers maintain dominance through intimidation, isolation, economic abuse, coercion, and using children — a tool for assessing intimate partner violence.

Cycle of violence

A pattern in some abusive relationships of tension building, an acute incident, and a calm 'honeymoon' phase, which then repeats. It helps explain why leaving is difficult.

Elder abuse and neglect

Physical, emotional, sexual, or financial harm, or neglect, of an older adult. Indicators include unexplained injuries, sudden financial changes, and isolation; suspicion is reportable.

Child abuse and neglect types

Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional/psychological abuse, and neglect (physical, medical, educational, emotional). Reasonable suspicion of any type triggers mandated reporting.

Risk assessment in child welfare

Evaluating the likelihood of future harm to a child by weighing safety threats, caregiver capacity, the child's vulnerability, and protective factors to decide on safety planning or removal.

Psychosis (assessment)

A break from reality marked by hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking/speech, or grossly disorganized behavior. The MSE documents these; safety and medical/substance causes must be assessed.

Hallucination vs. delusion

A hallucination is a false sensory perception (e.g., hearing voices); a delusion is a fixed false belief (e.g., persecution). Both are assessed in the thought and perception sections of the MSE.

Mood disorders (overview)

Disorders of emotional state — major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, and bipolar disorders. Assessment distinguishes unipolar depression from bipolarity (history of mania/hypomania).

Mania vs. hypomania

Mania is a distinct period of elevated/irritable mood with marked impairment, possible psychosis, or hospitalization (bipolar I); hypomania is a milder, shorter version without marked impairment (bipolar II).

Anxiety disorders (overview)

Generalized anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, social anxiety, and (separately classified) OCD and PTSD. Assessment notes triggers, avoidance, and functional impairment.

PTSD criteria (overview)

Exposure to trauma followed by intrusion (flashbacks, nightmares), avoidance, negative changes in mood/cognition, and arousal/reactivity, lasting over a month with impairment.

Personality disorders

Enduring, inflexible patterns of inner experience and behavior that deviate from cultural norms and cause distress or impairment, grouped into Clusters A (odd), B (dramatic), and C (anxious).

Substance use disorder severity

DSM-5-TR rates a substance use disorder as mild, moderate, or severe based on how many of 11 criteria (e.g., loss of control, craving, tolerance, withdrawal) are met within 12 months.

Withdrawal vs. intoxication

Intoxication is the reversible effect during use; withdrawal is the syndrome on stopping/reducing a substance. Some withdrawals (alcohol, benzodiazepines) are medically dangerous and need monitoring.

Tolerance and dependence

Tolerance is needing more of a substance for the same effect; physical dependence is the body's adaptation, producing withdrawal on cessation. Neither alone equals a substance use disorder.

Neurocognitive disorders

Acquired declines in cognition — delirium (acute, fluctuating, often reversible) and major/mild neurocognitive disorder (e.g., dementia). Assessment distinguishes delirium from dementia and depression.

Delirium vs. dementia

Delirium is acute, fluctuating, with impaired attention and often a medical cause (reversible); dementia is gradual and progressive with memory and other cognitive loss. The two can co-occur.

Functional behavioral assessment (ABC)

Analyzing the Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence to understand the function a behavior serves (e.g., attention, escape) so an intervention can target that function.

Social support assessment

Evaluating the size, type (emotional, instrumental, informational), and quality of a client's support network — a key protective factor and resource for intervention.

Family life cycle (assessment)

Carter and McGoldrick's stages (leaving home, coupling, young children, adolescents, launching, later life). Transitions are high-stress points where symptoms often emerge; the map separates normal stress from dysfunction.

Communication patterns in families

Assessing who talks to whom, alliances and coalitions, roles, and rules — including dysfunctional patterns like scapegoating, mind-reading, and double binds — to understand family functioning.

Spirituality and religion in assessment

Faith and spiritual practice can be a coping resource, a source of meaning, or a source of conflict. The worker assesses their role respectfully and without imposing personal beliefs.

Acculturation and migration

Assessment considers immigration history, acculturation stress, documentation status concerns, language access, and intergenerational acculturation gaps, all of which shape presenting problems and access to care.

Intersectionality

The idea that overlapping identities (race, gender, class, sexuality, disability) combine to shape a person's experience of privilege and oppression — a lens for culturally responsive assessment.

Sociogram

A diagram mapping the relationships and interaction patterns within a group, showing alliances, isolates, and influence — useful in group and family assessment.

Reliability vs. validity (assessment tools)

Reliability is the consistency of a measure across time and raters; validity is whether it measures what it claims to. A good assessment tool must be both reliable and valid.

Sensitivity vs. specificity (screening)

Sensitivity is a screen's ability to correctly identify those with a condition (few false negatives); specificity is its ability to correctly identify those without it (few false positives).

Suicide warning signs

Talking about wanting to die, seeking means, hopelessness, withdrawing, giving away possessions, sudden calm after depression, and increased substance use. They prompt immediate risk assessment.

Chronic vs. acute risk

Acute risk is the immediate, short-term danger (e.g., active suicidal plan now); chronic risk is the ongoing baseline elevation (e.g., history, diagnosis). Both are assessed and addressed differently.

Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI)

A DSM-5-TR set of questions exploring how a client understands their problem, its causes and supports, cultural identity, and the help they want — improving diagnostic accuracy across cultures.

Strengths-based questions

Assessment questions that elicit competencies, past successes, and resources ('What has helped before?'), balancing problem exploration and grounding the plan in what already works.

Developmental trauma

Repeated or prolonged trauma in childhood (often interpersonal) that disrupts development, attachment, and self-regulation, with effects broader than a single PTSD diagnosis captures.

Crisis precipitant

The specific triggering event or 'last straw' that overwhelms coping and produces a crisis state. Identifying it focuses assessment and crisis intervention.

Goal setting (collaborative)

Treatment goals are set with the client, grounded in the assessment, stated in the client's words where possible, and made measurable so progress can be tracked and termination judged.

Contracting

Reaching a clear, mutual agreement on the focus, goals, roles, frequency, and ground rules of the work. The contract clarifies expectations and strengthens engagement.

Engagement

The first phase of practice: building rapport and trust, conveying empathy and respect, clarifying roles, and motivating the client to participate. A strong start predicts retention.

Validation

Communicating that a client's feelings and reactions make sense given their situation. Central to DBT and to building the alliance; it does not require agreeing with the behavior.

Behavioral rehearsal / role-play

Practicing a new skill or interaction in session (e.g., assertiveness) so the client can perform it in real life with greater confidence and competence.

Token economy

A behavioral system that gives tokens (later exchanged for rewards) to reinforce target behaviors. Used in structured settings with children and inpatient populations.

Systematic desensitization

A behavioral technique pairing relaxation with a graduated hierarchy of feared stimuli to reduce phobic anxiety through counter-conditioning.

ABC model (CBT)

Ellis's model: an Activating event leads to Beliefs that produce emotional and behavioral Consequences. Therapy targets the beliefs, not the event, to change the consequences.

Crisis intervention model (Roberts)

A seven-stage model: assess lethality, establish rapport, identify problems, deal with feelings, explore alternatives, develop an action plan, and follow up.

Detriangling

A Bowenian technique in which the worker stays connected to two people in conflict without taking sides or being pulled into their triangle, helping them deal directly with each other.

Joining (family work)

The structural-therapy process of accommodating to and connecting with a family — matching tone and respecting hierarchy — to build the alliance needed before intervening.

Boundary making

A structural technique that strengthens or loosens boundaries between subsystems — for example, blocking a child from intruding on the parental subsystem — to reorganize the family.

Circular questioning

A Milan-systemic interviewing method that asks about differences and relationships ('Who worries most when she does that?') to reveal interactional patterns rather than individual traits.

Positive connotation

A Milan technique that ascribes a positive, system-serving intention to a symptom or behavior, reducing defensiveness and opening space for change.

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT)

Sue Johnson's attachment-based couples therapy that de-escalates the negative interaction cycle and restructures the bond so partners can reach for each other securely.

Family preservation

Intensive, time-limited, often in-home services to keep at-risk families safely together and prevent out-of-home placement of children when safety can be maintained.

Wraparound

A team-based, individualized care-planning process for children with complex needs that coordinates formal and natural supports around family-driven goals.

Brief therapy

Time-limited treatment focused on a specific goal, drawing on solution-focused, task-centered, and strategic methods. Useful where resources are limited and the focus is clear.

Supportive therapy

Treatment that reinforces existing strengths and coping rather than uncovering conflict — used with clients in crisis, with limited ego strength, or needing stabilization.

Termination feelings

Ending therapy can stir loss, abandonment, anger, or pride for both client and worker. Naming and processing these feelings is part of a healthy termination.

Cultural responsiveness in intervention

Adapting techniques, language, and pace to the client's culture, involving cultural and community supports, and not assuming a one-size approach. The client is the expert on their context.

Working with involuntary clients

Acknowledge the mandate openly, clarify what is and is not negotiable and confidential, find a shared goal, and reduce reactance by emphasizing the client's choices within the mandate.

Anger management

Interventions that build awareness of triggers and physiological cues, teach relaxation and cognitive reframing, and rehearse alternative responses to reduce destructive expressions of anger.

Parent management training

Teaching caregivers behavioral strategies — clear commands, consistent consequences, and positive reinforcement — to reduce children's disruptive behavior. An evidence-based approach.

Play therapy

Using play as the medium of expression and treatment with children, who communicate and process experience through play more readily than through talk.

Stages of group development

Tuckman's forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The worker's role shifts across stages — from structure and safety early to facilitating work and ending later.

Co-leadership (groups)

Two workers running a group together to model interaction, share observation, and cover more members. Co-leaders coordinate roles and process their own dynamics outside the group.

Termination of a group

Ending a group involves reviewing gains, processing loss, addressing unfinished business, and planning for maintaining change and using outside supports.

Crisis stabilization vs. insight

In a crisis, the worker prioritizes safety, structure, and restoring functioning over insight-oriented exploration, which is reserved for later, more stable phases.

Medication and collaboration

Social workers do not prescribe but recognize when a psychiatric evaluation is indicated, support adherence, monitor effects and side effects within scope, and collaborate with prescribers.

Relapse as part of recovery

In substance-use and behavioral-change work, relapse is treated as a common, informative event rather than failure — an opportunity to revise the plan and strengthen coping.

Strengths-based intervention

Mobilizing client and environmental strengths, resilience, and resources to reach goals, rather than focusing intervention solely on fixing deficits.

Termination readiness

Signs a client is ready to end: goals substantially met, symptom relief, improved functioning and coping, and the ability to maintain gains and handle setbacks independently.

Evaluating practice (single-system design)

Tracking a measurable target (e.g., panic frequency) across a baseline and intervention period (an AB design) to evaluate whether the intervention is working for this client.

Formative vs. summative evaluation

Formative evaluation monitors and improves treatment while it is ongoing; summative evaluation judges overall outcomes at the end. Both keep practice accountable.

Use of self

The conscious, disciplined use of the worker's own personality, warmth, and reactions in service of the client — within professional boundaries — to build the relationship and promote change.

Normalizing

Helping a client see that their reaction is a common, understandable response to their situation, reducing shame and isolation and supporting engagement.

Partializing

Breaking an overwhelming problem into smaller, manageable parts so the client can address one piece at a time and build a sense of mastery.

Confidentiality and the alliance

Clearly explaining confidentiality and its limits at the outset builds the trust on which the therapeutic alliance — the strongest common factor in outcomes — depends.

Common factors in therapy

Elements shared across effective therapies — the alliance, empathy, client expectancy/hope, and goal consensus — that account for much of the change regardless of model.

Stages-of-change matched intervention

Tailoring approach to readiness: consciousness-raising and MI in precontemplation/contemplation; action planning and skills in preparation/action; relapse prevention in maintenance.

Community organizing

A macro intervention mobilizing community members to identify shared problems and act collectively for change, building leadership and power among those affected.

Mediation

A neutral process in which the worker helps parties in conflict communicate and reach their own agreement, used in family, divorce, and community disputes.

Crisis follow-up

After stabilizing a crisis, the worker checks back, confirms the action plan is working, links the client to ongoing services, and adjusts the safety plan as needed.