1	Casework The effectiveness of casework services in child welfare
2	Casework Method
3	Casework in Child Welfare The need for developing a case plan for each child in foster care and Monitoring their progress was best achieved using the casework method. The caseworker is responsible for completing a “home study” before a child is placed in a prospective foster family.
4	Constraints on Casework The parameters of casework intervention are set by the responsible governmental organization. the amount of aid available, the requirements for eligibility, the limitations on recipients’ activities, the structure of intervention— all these parameters are established by governmental guidelines.
5	Limits on Professionalism Whether working on the child abuse report phone lines, investigating complaints, developing a case plan for a child removed from his or her parents, assessing a foster family, or visiting a child who has been placed, the basic parameters governing child welfare intervention are established by the local agency.
6	Professional Autonomy The caseworker operates at the interface between program and agency regulations that are part of a large administrative system and the individual client. The constraints on professional autonomy make it difficult to be creative and flexible in assembling the financial and human services necessary to help the client.
7	Supervision The caseworker is generally subject to close administrative supervision which is tied to professional advancement, job security, merit review, and financial rewards. Success requires following agency rules.
8	Prestige of clients Casework is conducted under particular constraints which tend to produce low morale (i.e., the clients are not generally social valued). Caseworkers often deal with very difficult clients who suffer from chronic failure. Individuals who are helped, and who thereafter require no further services, leave and are replaced in the caseload by chronic cases.
9	Decision-making: who’s in charge The legal regulatory administrative constraints on professional autonomy limit the decision making power and the professional satisfaction that comes from exercising professional authority to achieve a desirable and effective end.
10	Paperwork While eligibility screening and administrative overhead (paperwork) tasks have tended in recent years to be shifted to clerical staff, there remains a large administrative function to be carried out which most caseworkers presumably find less important and rewarding than direct work with clients.
11	Professionalism Doctors, lawyers, college professors and other college trained professionals are not subject to close supervision. What oversight or supervision that does occur is provided by “peer review.” The “right to prescribe according to one’s judgment,” the freedom to choose strategies, and the academic freedom to teach what one thinks is important in the manner one thinks is best—all are characteristics of professional autonomy.
12	Experimentation Child welfare casework as a form of scientifically based practice is hampered by the lack of experimentation that is allowed at the casework level.