Contextualisation as a Client - Centred Approach in Engagement Process

Social work as a profession, for successful practice, necessitate interventions focussed to the context within the frame work of the realm of practice. This process of context building involves engaging the client to travel from the wider ?social world' to his narrow ?private world'. Social world refers to the larger social milieu of which he is an integral part where the client connects himself with others in culturally approved ways. Inability to satisfy the demands of the situation could develop into problems. Social worker's concern is to analyse situations that could result in better understanding and identification of the problem. Establishing clarity on the problem is the key to problem solving. "Contextualisation is a client-centred approach that visualises the client in totality, considering his outer social world and his narrow private world and the problems originating from his unsatisfied engagement that undermines his coping, with a view to improve the effectiveness of service delivery". It is a process of arriving at a problem segment from a gigantic problem tree, and from an intriguing client profile to a clearer vision of client peculiarities and situation specifics. This paper discusses the two key concepts namely Engagement and Contextualisation as integral to social work practice.