Assessment in social work involves the evaluation of the factors and issues relating to the individual and family, inter alia in order to develop the most suitable way to assist the family. For individuals and families, the process mainly involves interviews and the assessment of documents. The social worker will begin with the individual or members of the family. This initial interview will provide an insight into who else to interview, such as a workmate, a teacher, a probation officer or a healthcare professional (Bolger & Walker, 2014). The social worker may also peruse documents relevant to assessing the micro and macro issues pertaining to the individual or family.
The information collected includes micro-level information such as that involving the family, work, and school. Next is the meso-level information about how the different micro-systems interact. After that, there is the exo-level information that involves the community around the individual or family (Bolger & Walker, 2014). Finally, there is the macro-level information that involves the sociocultural issues associated with the individual or family.
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Based on the outline above, the micro-level and meso-level information above falls within the general micro-level assessment. Conversely, the exo-level and macro-level information fall within the general macro-level information. The main similarity is that all this information relates to factors affecting the life of the individual or family (Bolger & Walker, 2014). The primary difference is that the micro-level factors affect the client directly while macro-level factors are secondary hence the client may not even know about them.
Over and above the interviews, gathering macro-level information, I would use government offices; include the social service office, to find data about the community. I would also evaluate other cases about individuals and families in the same area as some macro-level data would be congruent.
A client system may be unwilling to cooperate and provide data for an assessment of the client does not trust the system or does not consider the outcome to be in the client’s best interest. For example, if the client system involves a convict, there might already be breach of trust between the individual and the system. Conversely, if the client is a criminal whose conduct has not yet been punished, the client would have reasons to hide personal information.
Reference
Bolger, J., & Walker, P. (2014). Models of Assessment. Social Work: An Introduction. London: Sage , 69-83.
