Strategies for Work with Involuntary Clients - 3rd Edition by Ronald H Rooney & Rebecca G Mirick (Paperback)

About the Book

In an update to this classic text, Ronald H. Rooney and Rebecca G. Mirick explore the best ways to work with unwilling clients. This book provides a framework for understanding the legal, ethical, and practical concerns, offering theory, treatment models, and specific practice strategies to facilitate collaborative, effective working relationships.

Book Synopsis

Often in their careers, social workers will encounter clients who are either legally required to attend treatment services or are otherwise coerced or pressured into those services. Practitioners in settings from prisons to emergency rooms to nursing homes to child protection agencies will find themselves with involuntary clients. In an update to this classic text, social workers Ronald H. Rooney and Rebecca G. Mirick explore the best ways to work with unwilling clients.

While work with involuntary clients is common, it can be challenging, frustrating, and unproductive unless practitioners are well trained for it. This book provides a theoretical framework for understanding the legal, ethical, and practical concerns when working with involuntary clients, offering theory, treatment models, and specific practice strategies influenced by the best available knowledge. Animated by case studies across diverse settings, these resources can be used by practitioners to facilitate collaborative, effective working relationships with involuntary clients.

Review Quotes

In this substantive and helpful collection of essays, the editors and the contributors manage to convey that we can be respectful of a client's rights while not being too easily put off by understandable resistance. In the end, real change is always in the control of the clients, even those who didn't have a choice in engaging in the service.--Lawrence Shulman, SUNY Buffalo

This book helped me define who is involuntary and how to approach a client who is defined that way. It presents cases, data, research, and questions that will shift our way of thinking about clients and therapist that are 'forced' to be in treatment.--Elizabeth Misener, University of Southern California

This comprehensive and accessible text will be plundered for its insightful observations coupled with practical suggestions across a range of service areas. It is timely, as emphasis is shifting from identifying problems/risks to looking at how work can be undertaken with different types of involuntary clients to effect the required change. Best read from cover to cover, this is a genuine candidate for the authoritative guide in this challenging area of work.--Martin C. Calder, director, Calder Training and Consultancy

Hooray! The much-anticipated third edition of Strategies for Work with Involuntary Clients builds on the superb previous editions, adding depth and breadth to a uniquely useful presentation of practice strategies for working with individuals and families. Ronald H. Rooney and Rebecca Mirick provide insightful guidelines for legal and ethical issues and a new chapter on the 'involuntary' practitioner. An invaluable resource for both students and professionals.--Alex Gitterman, University of Connecticut School of Social Work

About the Author

Ronald H. Rooney is professor emeritus at the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, and coauthor of Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skills.

Rebecca G. Mirick is a licensed clinical social worker and assistant professor at Salem State University. Her research focuses on client engagement and resistance, suicide prevention, and work with parents involved with child protective services.