Motivational Congruence In Social Work

Secondly, the social worker acts as a member of the therapeutic alliance between the client and herself (Rehgr & Antle, 1997). These roles can often conflict, as the social worker has a responsibility to help the client with the issues that he or she presents with, as well as an obligation to the agency to perform the required intervention (Pope & Kang, 2011). Thus, at the first session, it is important for the practitioner to clarify the responsibilities that the he or she has to the agency, including restrictions to confidentiality, what the mandating agency expects of the client and the intervention, and the amount of time the social worker has been given to work with the client (Bogo, 2006). It is also important to distinguish between the …show more content…
Another important difference between voluntary and involuntary clients is that involuntary clients often enter service with the assumption that the practitioner’s purpose is to tell them what to do in order to satisfy the requirements of the mandating agency (de Jong & Berg, 2001), even though the client may not share the same goals of the agency. Thus, many social work researchers write about the need to develop “motivational congruence” between practitioners and involuntary clients, commenting that this is essential for effective counselling (e.g. Ivanoff et al., 1994; Rooney, 1992). Motivational congruence can be defined as the relationship between the services that the social worker provides and the motivation of the client; in other words, it refers to the active participation of the client in formulating meaningful goals, as well as making clear what will occur during the treatment process (Rooney, 1992). Although this is an essential step to complete with any client, it may be particularly important with involuntary clients because their initial goal may be to stop seeing the practitioner altogether, or may be unrelated to the issues they are presenting with (Bogo, …show more content…
In order to establish a positive relationship with involuntary clients, it is even more crucial to focus on client strengths and successes than it is with a voluntary one (de Jong & Berg, 1998). Since involuntary clients often feel like they will be judged for the events that led them to see the practitioner, focusing on strengths will be both unexpected and welcomed (de Jong & Berg, 2001). Therefore, no matter which approach is used with involuntary clients, focusing on strengths will serve to strengthen the practitioner-client relationship from the first