The Caseworker's Use of Collateral Information

Abstract

It has seemed to me that in order to clarify our theories and practices in the use of collaterals these considerations are important: Our emotions about the instrument of the social service exchange and of protectiveness of the client against that instrument need to be faced and examined for their validity. In our thinking, which will affect those feelings, we need to pierce the shell of certain concepts that have become shibboleths among us, to seek for the core of their actual meaning, and to try to establish their particular relationship to social casework practice. I refer especially to the concepts of confidentiality and self-determination, and to the concept of professional authority as a counterpart of professional responsibility. It is only as our feeling is accounted for and our operational philosophy is clarified that we are prepared to identify the useful purposes which information from collateral sources may serve for the client himself. These purposes, in the large, are the facilitation and the integration of the help that is given him. Cognizance must be taken, too, of the limitations in the use of secondary sources. Finally, since the end must preexist in the means, the ways in which collateral information is used will largely determine whether in general and in the individual case it will be of small or great value in promoting the joint purposes of agency and client.