Social Work Practice: A Life Model

Author(s): Alex Gitterman and Carel B. Germain

Source: Social Service Review , Dec., 1976, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1976), pp. 601-610
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30015414

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30015414?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Social Service Review

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Social Work Practice:
A Life Model

Alex Gitterman and Carel B. Germain

Columbia University

This article presents a model of practice that attempts to integrate two historic social
work positions: emphasis on knowledge and skill to effect change in persons, and
emphasis on knowledge and skill to effect change in environments. An
ecological/reciprocal perspective not only integrates these positions but th
methodological specializations of casework, group work, and community organiza-
tion as well. Through an ecological theoretical perspective and a reciprocal concep-
tion of social work function, people and their environments receive simultaneous
professional attention. Needs and issues are reconceptualized from "personalit
states" and "environmental states" to problems in living. Professional interventio
associated with problems people experience are specified.

Over the years of its development, social work practice has h

difficulty integrating two historical traditions: the emphasis on kno
edge and skills to effect change in persons, and the emphasis
knowledge and skills to effect change in environments. Similar
there has been difficulty in integrating method specializations
casework, group work, and community organization. In the past de
cade, new social conditions and new knowledge propelled social wor
to reexamine its formulations of practice and its technical interve
tions. Most efforts to reconceptualize the profession's practice man
ifest some common features: a view of human phenomena through
systems perspective, an emphasis on institutional and environment
structures, and the identification of various "target systems" as the
for professional intervention.' Yet, quite naturally, a gap exists be
tween the new knowledge and its use in everyday practice.
Social Service Review (December 1976).
c 1976 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
602 Social Service Review

The life model integrates the treatment and reform trad

conceptualizing and emphasizing the dysfunctional transact
tween people and their social and physical environments. T
ecological theoretical perspective and a reciprocal conception
work function, people and their environments receive simu
professional attention. Needs and issues are reconceptual
"personality states" and "environmental states" to problems
Within the ecological perspective, human beings are co
evolving and adapting through transactions with all elemen
environments. In these adaptive processes the human being
environment reciprocally shape each other. People mold the
ronments in many ways and, in turn, must then adapt to th
they create.2
Increasingly, industrial society has posed complex adaptive tasks to
human beings at all stages of the life cycle. The structures and func-
tions of familial, organizational, and other environmental systems
have undergone dramatic change. The family's capacity for fulfilling
its integrative functions has been taxed by its members' divergent
opportunities, needs, responsibilities, and interests. At the same time,
institutions are experiencing serious problems in managing their in-
tended service functions. These dramatic changes and disjunctions
between adaptive demands and the resources available for meeting
the demands generate stress. People's styles of coping with stress
emerge from their perceptions of environmental demands and re-
sources and of their own response capabilities.
Social work's distinctive functions and tasks arise from its social
purpose: to strengthen coping patterns of people and to impro
environments so that a better match can be attained between peop
adaptive needs and potential and the qualities of their impingi
environments.3 Professional action is directed toward helping peop
and their environments overcome obstacles that inhibit the develo
ment of adaptive capacities. Assessment upon which action is ba
derives from a nonlinear view of causality. Assessment requires
understanding of the functions served by current transactions for
person and for the environment. In helping a person defined by se
or others as depressed, for example, professional concern centers o
the function of the depression for the person and his primary grou
and on how it affects their reciprocal perceptions and transactions
Intervention then takes on the character of natural life processes th
alter, use, or support properties of the environment, the coping qua
ities of the person(s), and the nature of the transactions betw
them.

Within this transactional focus, problems in living faced by indi

viduals, families, and groups are further specified as: (1) proble
and needs associated with tasks involved in life transitions; (2) prob

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Social Work Practice: A Life Model 603

lems and needs associated with tasks in using and influenc

ments of the environment; and (3) problems and needs as
with interpersonal obstacles which impede the work of a fam
group as it deals with transitional and/or environmental task
work processes are directed to client problems and needs with
or more of these areas.

While these problems of living are interrelated, each comprises

distinctive client tasks and professional interventions. For example,
sixty-five-year-old person may experience interrelated stresses arisin
out of the transition from employment to retirement, tensions within
the immediate family, and unresponsive environmental institutions.
The client and worker might contract to focus on the life transitiona
tasks, or the environmental tasks, or the maladaptive interpersonal
processes among the family (or group) members. The focus might be
on two or all three areas.4 While the worker must pay attention to the
complex interrelationships among these life forces, both the worker
and the client must be clear at any given moment as to the specific
problem-in-living receiving attention.
Emerging from the contracting process through which problems or
needs are mutually defined, identified, and partialized, a division of
labor evolves between client and worker.5 The client focuses on his
life tasks; the worker seeks to assure the conditions necessary for th
client to achieve the tasks.6 The worker remains continuously in tun
with shifts in the client's concern from one area to another, draw
on knowledge and skill in the use of communication processes, action
to restructure situations, and environmental processes and resources

Transitional Problems and Needs

Individual development occurs when internal, age-specific m

tional phases transact with phase-specific environmental nutrie
Thus every developmental stage represents mutual tasks for the
vidual and for his environment. The individual must meet matura-
tional and social demands that may require shifts in self-concept, n
ego skills, and the relinquishment of customary coping patterns fo
novel strategies. At the same time, the environment must provide t
required opportunities and resources. Incomplete or thwarted t
resolution at one stage tends to create difficulties in task resolutio
associated with a later stage.
Similarly, there are status-role changes that occur over the life spa
such as a new job, migration to a new environment, marriage, a
parenthood. Some status changes coincide with developmental stage

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
604 Social Service Review

as in retirement or entry into junior high school. Some do

sarily coincide with developmental phases, for example, mi
a new job. These changes, too, pose demands for new ego sk
replacement of familiar adaptive patterns by new coping me
and shifts in self-concept.
There are also changes to less valued and to stigmatized
when one becomes a foster child, a mental patient, a parole
bationer, a welfare client, or a physically handicapped p
tasks associated with these changes, however, are of a differ
In some instances, they are directed toward escaping the st
though the more stigmatized statuses have limited legitimize
our society." In other instances, these changes place hea
demands in maintaining a positive self-image, controlling an
depression, and taking effective action to escape the bou
these statuses. Moreover, occupants of these statuses are als
with the same developmental, status, and crisis tasks as othe
Hence, they carry an enormous adaptive burden, but wit
environmental nutriment.
Finally, there are the expectable and the exceptional crisis events of
life, the threats and natural losses that come to everyone over time
and those catastrophic threats and losses that come too early, or too
"unfairly," or too profoundly to be considered expectable in all lives.
Such situational crises have an immediacy and enormity of demand
that distinguish them, in part, from the developmental and role tran-
sitions previously discussed.9 They often require immediate mobiliza-
tion of the environment and of the individual in order to prevent
collapse.
It is not only the individual, however, who experiences such transi-
tional challenges. Families have a life cycle of their own. They also
move through identifiable stages of development, status changes, and
crisis events, such as a new marriage, the birth of a child, unemploy-
ment, or illness, posing tasks for the collectivity that may not always
mesh with the transitional tasks of individual members.10 Similarly,
groups proceed through interactional phases of development,11
status changes, and crisis events which threaten the life of the group.
In attempts to help individuals, families, and groups with develop-
mental, status-role, and crisis tasks, certain practice principles become
particularly relevant. Worker activity is directed toward exploration
and mutual clarity of problem definition. People's stresses are
legitimized as "normal" life processes appropriate for helping atten-
tion. The worker partializes problems into smaller, more manageable
elements. At the same time, he searches for patterns of behavior and
for connections between past and present patterns. At times, it may be
difficult for the worker to invite this elaboration. The content may be
quite painful (e.g., loss), or may touch upon social taboos (e.g., sexual-

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Social Work Practice: A Life Model 605

ity), or may trigger the worker's own unresolved development

(e.g., ethnic identity). It becomes essential for the worker to
the content, carefully avoiding premature reassurance or inte
tions. The worker and client together seek and use informatio
alternatives, and weigh costs and benefits. A central conce
provide opportunity for resolution of life tasks in the life sit
appropriate to the client's sense of time and space, his life-sty
aspirations. (Real life action, or even role play, can be help
working on adaptive tasks.)
In families and groups, the worker also helps members to se
out their individual developmental goals and tasks from the ex
tions exerted by the collectivity and by environmental forces.
same time, the worker encourages family and group members
responsive to one another as they seek areas of common devel
tal expectations and tasks. And people are always encouraged t
family, peer group, and environmental supports in pursuin
transitional tasks.

Environmental Problems and Needs

This area of help is concerned with adaptive issues arising from t

nature of the social and physical environments. The social
environment, which man has created and to which he must then
adapt, includes institutions, organizations, and social networks. The
physical environment includes both natural and man-made structures
and objects, and time and space.
A distinct feature of contemporary urban society is the existence of
complex organizations and their impact on people's daily lives. As
they become larger and more complex, organizations are more
difficult to administer and coordinate. Out of necessity, they become
preoccupied with the standardization of policies and procedures. In-
stitutional homeostasis and administrative "peace and quiet" often
take precedence over people's individualized service needs.
Within this context, people turn to organizations for essential ser-
vices (health, education, welfare). At times, their contacts add to their
distress instead of mitigating or alleviating it. Their encounters with
organizational representatives may lead to a sense of personal inade-
quacy and stigma. While many organizational representatives are
motivated to carry out their specialized functions at least initially, they
sometimes build defenses against dehumanizing and frustrating con-
ditions and a sense of failure. They may then become blind to the
injustices and social inequities within their own and other organiza-

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
606 Social Service Review

tions, and withdraw affect, zeal, and commitment to th

Others may become overidentified with organizationa
expense of client need. Still others may develop a
stereotyped characterizations of client behaviors.
Stigmatized by their client status and unaware of thei
privileges, people often accept and resign themselves to
tions. Hence, the social worker has a particularly critica
helping people to use and to influence elements of th
tional environment. Knowledge and assessment12 of o
structures, functions, and processes provide an importan
professional influence.i1 Interventive strategies of influe
differentially invoking or appealing to the formal organ
jectives, structures, roles, and policies favorable to the c
but circumvented; the formal organizational and environ
countability and sanctioning mechanisms; the organizati
vidual representative's self-interest and self-esteem; the
service ethic supportive of individualization; and the inf
in which favors are collected and exchanged.15 The effec
these collaborative strategies are dependent on the work
sional competence, credibility, zeal, and resilience. With
ting especially, professional visibility and reputation for
provide an essential means for organizational involv
influence. If these collaborative strategies prove inef
worker may turn to more adversarial behaviors, for exa
tion, public criticism, and use of mass media.
The concept of social network refers to important fig
environment, including relatives, friends, neighbors, an
a network often meets the needs of human beings fo
provides recognition, affirmation, and protection from
tion; and offers the means for identification and for soci
the norms, values, knowledge, and belief systems of t
culture. It serves as a mutual aid system essential for ad
for coping with stress. Some networks, however, may r
viance, be subject themselves to maladaptive interperson
or undermine the client's sense of identity and autonomy
networks are too loosely organized and integrated to ser
of support. Some clients may be without any social netw
Since attachment behavior in the human being has ada
tance across the life cycle, the social network is an impo
sion of the social worker's attention. Client and worker action can be
directed toward mobilizing or strengthening real life ties between the
client and significant others in the life space, finding new linkages or
reestablishing old ones. In the absence of natural networks, worker
and client may consider the possibility of relational experiences
through the use of other levels of social work personnel, volunteers,

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Social Work Practice: A Life Model 607

and friendly visitors. Together, worker and client may conside

use of organized groups (Parent-Teacher Associations, Parents w
out Partners, tenant councils, consumer groups, etc.) to meet rel
ship (and task) needs, or the construction of mutual-aid system
meet adaptive requirements and to exchange resources. All of t
actions are close to life processes and hence are likely to be of m
adaptive value than major reliance on the time-limited relations
with the worker.

We are beginning to understand how people organize and use

space in the physical environment and how, in turn, spatial variables
affect behavior. Ward geography, for example, is an important factor
in the social interaction of residents of a geriatric facility or patients in
a mental hospital. Spatial arrangements in classrooms and treatment
cottages may invite or discourage particular behaviors in children.
Space, design, color, and decoration in social agencies communicate
to users of services their differential statuses.16 Social work interven-
tions directed to spatial variables or to providing experiences in the
natural world are used to enhance relatedness and increase the nutri-
tiveness of the environment.

Whatever interventive strategies are used in helping people to deal

with their social and physical environments, the worker must take into
account the consequences and implications of his actions on clients. At
times clients can be hurt by professionals with benign intentions but
dysfunctional interventions. Users of service need to be fully involved
in the assessment and intervention processes. Through their full par-
ticipation, users of service become educated to environmental struc-
tures, functions, and processes. They develop greater competence in
negotiating their environment and in exerting control over achieving
their life tasks.17

Maladaptive Interpersonal Problems and

Needs in Families and Groups

As the family or group works on the tasks associated with life transi-
tions or with using and influencing the environment, it sometimes
encounters impediments posed by maladaptive communication pro-
cesses and relationship patterns. Such impediments may be poorly
understood or altogether outside the members' awareness. Behavior-
ally they are expressed through patterned scapegoating, power
struggles, interlocking hostilities, mutual withdrawal, double binds,
and other distortions. While these patterned behaviors often serve a
latent function in maintaining the family or group equilibrium, the

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
608 Social Service Review

consequences are usually maladaptive for some members.

interpersonal obstacles to individual and collective growt
tation become a third area of help.
Practice interventions, then, include an assessment of
which generate the specific transactional obstacles. Ou
suggests that there are several repetitive sources of
conflict: (1) Discrepancy between an individual's and the
life transition tasks: A family may be preoccupied with it
maintenance, while its young adult member is striving fo
Or a group in a late stage of its development may experi
difficulty incorporating new members. (2) Dysfunctiona
tion to environmental pressures and inadequacies: In r
hostile environment, some members may develop apathy
interferes with mutual problem solving. Others m
scapegoating one another. (3) Discrepancy among member
tions to "power and love": One spouse may seek intima
other requires emotional distance. Or the parents may
matters of authority. (4) Normative conflicts among mem
differing generational perceptions of right and wrong, at
unattractive, good and bad. (5) Compositional problem
collective: A family or group may experience strain
leaves or a new or former member enters. Or a family o
isolate a member because of deviant descriptive or behav
teristics.

When the focus is on helping families and groups to deal with such
transactions as patterned scapegoating8i or double-bind modes of
communication,'9 the worker invites and encourages the members to
view the obstacle through a systemic perspective. The worker encour-
ages mutuality among members by helping them search for common
concerns and self-interests. At the same time, the worker reaches for
and encourages the elaboration of differential perspectives. Strategi-
cally, it is often easier for members with the greater power and per-
sonal strength to begin the exploratory process. As work on the obsta-
cle proceeds, the less powerful and more insecure members often
require special support and encouragement to risk their perceptions
and interpretations. Expression of members' divergent, discrepant
perceptions needs to be partialized and the associated affect encour-
aged. If members attempt to avoid the content, the worker focuses,
mediates, and guards the conditions of their agreed-upon contract.
Throughout, the worker provides relevant facts, interpretations, and
perceptions and lends professional strength, support, and faith in
members' capacity to move beyond the painful obstacle.
In a similar way, interpersonal barriers can arise between worker
and client(s) manifested in distorted communications and maladap-
tive relationship processes. Frequently such barriers are defined as

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Social Work Practice: A Life Model 609

client "resistance" when, in fact, they are transactional in origin. Th

arise from incongruencies in perceptions and expectations; feelings
related to age, sex, race, and ethnic differences; transference an
countertransference; and ambivalences, cognitive discrepancies, and
ambiguities. The worker has the responsibility for continuous vigi-
lance concerning the possible existence of such barriers and for brin
ing them into open discussion so that mutual work on them may tak
place, including assessing their source, nature, and consequences.20

Summary

The profession's social purpose has always referred to a dual interest

in people and situations, but the lack of knowledge about their reci-
procity made the practice application of social purpose difficult. This
paper has attempted to present an integrated perspective on social
work practice based on that reciprocity. The ecological perspective
provides a means for capturing the transactional processes between
human beings and their environments. The conceptualization of
people's needs into three interrelated areas of problems-in-living tran-
scends former methodological distinctions among casework, family
therapy, and group work, and provides a life model for intervention.

Notes

1. See, e.g., Carol H. Meyer, Social Work Practice: A Response to the Urban Crisis (New
York: Free Press, 1970); Allan Pincus and Anne Minahan, Social Work Practice (Itasca,
Ill.: F.T. Peacock, 1973); Howard Goldstein, Social Work Practice (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1973); Gale Goldberg and Ruth Middleman, Social Service
Delivery: A Structural Approach to Social Work Practice (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1974); and Max Siporin, Introduction to Social Work Practice (New York: Macmillan
Publishing Co., 1975).
2. Carel B. Germain, "The Ecological Perspective in Casework Practice," Social
Casework 54 (June 1973): 323-30.
3. See, e.g., William Gordon, "Basic Concepts for an Integrative and Generative
Conception of Social Work," in The General Systems Approach: Contributions toward an
Holistic Conception of Social Work, ed. Gordon Hearn (New York: Council on Social Work
Education, 1969); and William Schwartz, "Social Group Work: The Interactionist Ap-
proach," in Encyclopedia of Social Work, ed. Robert Morris (New York: National Associa-
tion of Social Workers, 1971).
4. In these situations, it is essential that the client and worker work on the same
problem in living at any moment in time. Otherwise, one might, for example, focus on
an environmental definition while the other might focus on a psychological identity
definition.

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
610 Social Service Review

5. For discussion and illustration of the contracting processes, see Alex

"Group Work in the Public Schools," in The Practice of Group Work, ed. Will
and Serapio Zalba (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 45
Kadushin, The Social Work Interview (New York: Columbia University Pr
105-40; Anthony Mallucio and Wilma Marlow, "The Case for the Cont
Work 9 (January 1974): 28-37; and Brett Seabury, "The Contract: Uses,
Limitations," Social Work 21 (January 1976): 16-21.
6. Eliot Studt, "Social Work Theory and Implications for the Practice
Social Work Education Reporter 16 (June 1968): 22-24, 42-46.
7. See Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, Psychological Issues Mon
(New York: International Universities Press, 1959), for the epigenetic dev
the autonomous ego.
8. Even though the formal role may be vacated, the person is assigne
stigmatized status such as ex-mental patient or ex-prisoner.
9. Developmental and social transitions occasionally take on the nature of
the tasks are perceived by the person or the environment as insurmount
10. Patricia O'Connell, "Family Developmental Tasks," Smith College Stu
Work 42 (June 1972): 203-10.
11. For an elaboration of stages of group development, see James
Hubert E. Jones, and Ralph L. Kolodny, "A Model for Stages of Developm
Work Groups," in Explorations in Group Work, ed. Saul Bernstein (Bo
University School of Social Work, 1968), pp. 12-53; W. Bennis and H.
Theory of Group Development," Human Relations 9 (November 1956):
12. The depth and scope of an organizational assessment are depende
factors as client need, whether the worker is employed by the agency bei
and previous contacts with the specific representative.
13. Brager makes an important distinction between "helping" and "infl
organization (George Brager, "Helping vs. Influencing: Some Political
Organizational Change" [paper presented at the National Conference o
fare, San Francisco, May 1975]).
14. Prof. Irving Miller has been particularly helpful in identifying var
strategies (e.g., Miller's speech before the Alumni Conference of the C
versity School of Social Work, November 3, 1973 [mimeographed]).
15. See Alvin Gouldner, "The Norm of Reciprocity," American Sociologic
(April 1960): 161-68; and Gene W. Dalton, "Influence and Organizationa
Organizational Change and Development, ed. Gene W. Dalton et al. (Ho
Richard D. Irwin, Inc., and Dorsey Press, 1970), pp. 250-58.
16. Brett Seabury, "Arrangement of Physical Space in Social Work Sett
Work 16 (October 1971): 43-49.
17. Group services have a unique potential for achieving this objective.
an inherent advantage in that (1) people can gain strength, security, and
being with others in a similar situation; (2) perceptions of personal,
problems can be transferred into perceptions of collective, social problem
tive action can gain greater institutional responsiveness; and (4) groups c
with other groups, thus representing a source for significant political act
18. See, e.g., Lawrence Schulman, "Scapegoats, Group Workers and P
Intervention," Social Work 12 (April 1967): 37-43; and E. Vogel and
Emotionally Disturbed Child as the Family Scapegoat," in A Modern Introd
Family, ed. E. Vogel and N. Bell (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 382
19. See, e.g., Jay Haley, Strategies of Psychotherapy (New York: Grune
1963).
20. For elaboration and illustration, see Alex Gitterman and Alice Schaeffer, "The
White Professional and the Black Client," Social Casework 53 (May 1972): 280-91.

This content downloaded from

111.94.68.187 on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:43:34 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms