Rehabilitation - Attitudes and Opinions of Individuals Supervising Rehabilitation - A Study of the Time Expended and the Functioning of Rehabilitation Teams - Second Partial Report

• NCJ Number: 79138
• Author(s): J L P Spickenheuer; M J M Brand-Koolen
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 86 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Country: Netherlands
• Note: Series Onderzoek en beleid, 12 - Research and Policy.

Annotation

Social workers' attitudes toward goals and methods, the judicial phases, and support resources for rehabilitation work with offenders in the Netherlands are investigated.

Abstract

A half-structured questionnaire was administered to 28 rehabilitation social worker teams consisting of 255 individuals. Results indicate that rehabilitation social workers consider the most important goals of their work to be assistance with clients' personal problems, material assistance to clients, and assistance to clients in building consciousness of social choices and behavior in that order. Almost all rehabilitation social workers regard assistance to clients through all stages of the judicial process including detention to be an essential part of their work. Social workers express the need for support in their work and for training in such areas as family crisis intervention, group treatment, and drug treatment. These facts suggest that workers do not feel secure in their ability to carry out their activities. A discrepancy exists between the attitude of the social workers and that of their clients: while the social workers choose to focus on personal problems of clients, clients are most interested in material assistance. Furthermore, as much as social workers may want clients to make free decisions, the social workers must because of the nature of the situation exercise control over clients' choices. Furthermore, social workers are likely to perceive a conflict in counseling clients between the need to gather information for the justice system and the need to assure that judicial decisions are advantageous to the rehabilitation of the clients. Because of their own feelings of insecurity, social workers tend to grope for new means of assistance such as the psychosocial model, which does not necessarily produce the desired effects. If particular attention were paid to defining individual clients' problems at intake, efforts toward rehabilitation could then be geared to that particular set of needs. For such a program, special intake officers could be added to the rehabilitation assistance team. It is doubtful whether, under the circumstances described, rehabilitation social workers will be capable of assuming the many control functions required by the introduction of new alternative sentences. Tables, notes, and extensive appendixes are supplied.