Social Work Skills: A Narrative Review of the Literature

This narrative review focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of the social work skills with children, adults and families. To date, theory is largely absent from the contemporary skills literature. Using the keywords 'social work' and 'skills', an electronic database search extracted peer-reviewed articles from the last ten years. The thematic analysis of the twenty-three articles retrieved revealed that the publications adopted the humanistic, critical, behavioural, psychodynamic, managerial and eclectic theoretical perspectives. Even though the clear majority of authors refrained from explicitly identifying the theories underlying specific skills, most implicitly espoused either the managerial perspective that neglects the holistic biopsychosocial assessment of clients or the practice ambiguous eclectic theoretical perspective. The major findings of the study include the lack of explicit theoretical perspectives in most publications and the widespread adoption of the managerial theoretical perspective. The study finally demonstrates that, even though the publications increased understanding of social work skills, none of them elaborated on the process through which skills are effectively operationalised in social work practice. A need subsequently emerges for qualitative case studies exploring how exactly specific theories, and through which techniques, inform the skills underlying effective social work assessments and interventions with children, adults and families.