Social Work Client Involuntary Client Essay

In the Netherlands, three community mental health therapists conducted a study about how engaged clients were that engaged in community mental health services. In this particular study, clinicians also explored factors influencing levels of client engagement. 529 clients participated in this study. Engagement assessment rating is based upon 6 characteristics, which will be explained later on. Staff evaluating the clients included 3 interdisciplinary healthcare teams from different regions of the world. Clients were referred for services via family, friends, or healthcare teams. Staff collected information about clients via naturalistic observation and home visits (Roeg, van de Goor, Garretsen, 2012, p.71-72) . The engagement scale mentioned previously involves rating clients on each of 6 characteristics on engagement behaviors displayed during a typical session using a 5 point scale. The scale goes from 1 (‘Always’) to 5 (‘Never’, as in ‘Never shows up on time’). All the points are totaled up, and a score greater than or equal to of 33 means that a …show more content…
In her article entitled “Social Conflict Perspective On Work with Involuntary Clients”, author Judith Cingolani defines an involuntary client as ‘those who must deal with a helping professional because they have behaved in ways annoying or troublesome to society’ (Cingolani 1984, p. 443). According to Cingolani, there’s a universal agreement among social workers that building a relationship is often harder with involuntary clients than it is with voluntary ones. One reason for this is that the helping process most often breaks down at the beginning stages of engagement and development of the relationship between therapist and client.When engagement fails, according to Cingolani, the therapist has two options: keep trying to engage the client or terminate the relationship with the