Three Levels of Social Work Intervention

Intervention

In some environments, the term "social work intervention" may refer specifically to circumstances in which governmental regulation requires a social worker to take actions against the will of one or more of the individuals involved, such as removing a child from a home where domestic violence or drug or alcohol abuse puts a child in harm's way. In other contexts, the term social work intervention may refer to all forms of social work, including short-term interactions with individuals such as occurs with community-based grief counseling following a tragic event.

Base-level social work intervention illustrates the foundational social work intervention level operating under the regulatory structure used in the United Kingdom, and in particular in Scotland. Social work intervention at this level includes general access to social services resources. Deployment of loss and grief counselors to a public school following an event, such as a school shooting or sudden loss of a classmate in an accident, illustrates this social work intervention level.

The United Kingdom first-levels intervention category also focuses on broad-based needs within the population. This level, however, involves proactive efforts to seek out individuals or families whose circumstances make them eligible for specific assistance programs. Financial need may form the impetus for this type of social work intervention, which focuses on assisting eligible families and individuals in gaining access to necessary resources.

The social work intervention category known in the United Kingdom scale of social work intervention as second levels starts out with social work activity involving families experiencing temporary crisis. At this level, the social worker works in cooperation with the families or individuals. However, if conditions worsen, such as to put at risk one or more individuals deemed members of a vulnerable class such as children or the elderly, second-levels interventions in the U.K. system can lead to government-dictated interventions such as removal from the home of at-risk individuals. The United Kingdom defines two additional social work intervention level categories, the third levels and fourth levels, the fourth level dealing specifically with abuses within the social work system itself.

The primary distinction in social work intervention levels under the U.S. regulatory structure involves a distinction between client-level and system-level social work interventions, according to the National Association of Social Workers website. Client-level intervention involves direct communication with, and coordination of services on behalf of, the individual client, including development of a service plan. System-level intervention involves the behind-the-scenes work of the social worker to evaluate in-place systems and work toward identifying shortcomings with the objective of implementing corrective action within the system to minimize those shortcomings.