Relationship-based practice – some fundamental principles
Social work is essentially about relationships: first and foremost with service users; but also with
social work colleagues and colleagues from other professional backgrounds – health, education,
police, to name a few; with the organisational context and wider policy context of practice; and
finally with ‘the self’, or oneself. These relationships do not exist in isolation from each other and
are interrelated and exert influences on each other.
What do we mean by relationship-based practice?
As already stated, relationship-based practice is not a new phenomenon (Ruch, 2005).
Relationships are central to social work practice but are shaped by the nature and purpose of the
intervention, whether the relationship is the primary means of intervention, i.e. ‘the end in itself’
or, as it is more commonly utilised, as a ‘means to an end’ (Network for Psycho-Social Policy and
Practice, 2002), and the timescales involved (Ruch, 2005). Definitions of relationship-based
practice are hard to come by but it is closely related to and builds on psychosocial approaches to
practice and the psychodynamically informed case-work tradition (Hollis, 1964). The central
characteristic of relationship-based practice is the emphasis it places on the professional
relationship as the medium through which the practitioner can engage with and intervene in the
complexity of an individual’s internal and external worlds. The social worker and service user
relationship is recognised to be an important source of information for the worker to understand
how best to help, and simultaneously this relationship is the means by which any help or
intervention is offered.
• The model of relationship-based practice we are proposing has several core
characteristics:
• It recognises that each social work encounter is unique.
• It understands that human behaviour is complex and multifaceted, i.e. people are not
simply rational beings but have affective – conscious and unconscious – dimensions that
enrich but simultaneously complicate human relationships.
• It focuses on the inseparable nature of the internal and external worlds of individuals and
the importance of integrated – psychosocial – as opposed to polarised responses to
social problems.
• It accepts that human behaviour and the professional relationship are an integral
component of any professional intervention.
• It places particular emphasis on ‘the use of self’ and the relationship as the means
through which interventions are channelled.
What these characteristics imply is that relationship-based practice involves practitioners
developing and sustaining supportive professional relationships in unique, complex and
challenging situations. An important but not necessarily explicit implication arising from this
model is the need to reconceptualise not only the nature and behaviour of service users but also
of professionals. This model places equal importance, therefore, on the unique and complex
nature of professionals and the rational and emotional dimensions of their behaviours. This is
often referred to in social work literature as the professional ‘use of self’. As a social worker one
of the biggest challenges you will face is being able to simultaneously focus in professional
encounters on what is happening for the service user and what is happening to you. By
developing this ability to understand holistically the service user’s and your own responses to a
specific situation you will ensure you are acting in the service user’s best interests.
Source: From: Wilson K., Ruch G., Lymbery M. and Cooper, A. (2011) (eds) Social Work: An
introduction to contemporary practice, Pearson, Harlow, pp. 7–8.
