Your FREE ASWB Flashcards 2026 – 200+ Cards

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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).

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.