Direct work, Therapeutic Work and Indirect Work

‘Direct work’ is any form of interactional work undertaken by social workers with children and birth family members and can be understood as the process of building and sustaining relationships with a child and their family, with the aims of promoting a child’s behavioural, emotional, psychological and relational wellbeing (Luckock and Lefevre, 2008). Social workers’ role in undertaking direct work with children is underpinned by statutory requirements in England which specify the minimum number of times a social worker must visit a child in placement: on the first day of the placement, within a week of its start and thereafter at least every six weeks while the placement is not considered a long-term one (DfE, 2015b). Therapeutic work has the same aims as direct work. This may lead to the question of how ‘direct work’ undertaken by social workers with children and their birth families differs from ‘therapeutic work’. The answer is not always clear-cut. Social workers regularly undertake life story work, for example, but the Adoption Support Fund in 2015 distinguished between ‘basic life story work’ and ‘extensive therapeutic life story work’.