Ramesh is 45 year old Sri Lankan man who works as a telephone call centre agent. He was close to and lived with his mother, who died 18 months ago. Ramesh was recently hospitalised after a suicide attempt. He had been taking anti-depressants for several months before he took an overdose. According to his sister, he had become depressed and was drinking and smoking a lot, and hardly ever eating. He had been taking time off work, and was at risk of losing his job with BT. His sister says that Ramesh went downhill after the death of their mother, but that she was surprised at this as he always complained about all the things he had to do for her when she was alive. The sister has a family of her own, but says that she has tried to involve Ramesh in her family, but he had mostly refused. He had some friends who he used to play cricket with, but he has stopped seeing them. He had been saying that there’s nothing to live for, and he wanted to be left alone. Ramesh is due to be released from hospital in two weeks’ time.
Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to critically analyse the Task-centred and client-centred approaches to Social Work Intervention. I will initially explain their main principles, advantages and disadvantages and apply them to the assessment, planning and intervention of the above case study. Particular attention will be paid to how these perspectives inform the application of anti-oppressive practice (AOP). The word ‘perspective’ describes a partial ‘view of the world’ (Payne 1997:290) and is often used to attempt to order and make sense of experiences and events from a particular and partial viewpoint. The reason for choosing these two theories is because they can be used simultaneously. One of the major attributes of the Person Centred approach is the emphasis on relationship building between the Social Worker and the service user, which therefore makes it easier to set out the tasks that need
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