True or False

1.      The authors state that asking clients about how they spend most of their work-day time is a useful way in which to uncover what is important to clients and some of their strengths. 

2.      In solution-focused interviewing, practitioners often take a break after interviewing the client about their concerns, goals, and strengths in order to think about what the client has said and to formulate some end-of-session feedback for the client before ending the interview. 

3.      In solution-focused interviewing, the interviewer works with clients using classifications of client problems developed by theorists in the helping professions. 

4.      Working within the client's frame of reference means asking for, listening to, and affirming the client's perceptions, all the while taking note of the words which the client uses to capture her perceptions. 

5.      Part of the rationale for asking clients what they have already tried to solve their problems is to send the message that the interviewer believes they are competent to make good things happen in their lives. 

6.      According to De Jong and Berg, regardless of the circumstances under which a client is seeing a practitioner (i.e. by choice or via pressure or coercion by someone else), the task of the practitioner remains the same, namely, building a cooperative, working relationship with the client around what the client might want different in his or her life. 

7.      When clients state that others in their lives are causing their problems and, therefore, there is little that they can do to solve them, De Jong and Berg suggest that it is useful for practitioners to challenge such a point of view as self defeating because it leaves clients’ situations unchanged. 

8.      According to the authors, one way to respond to a client who continues to blame others for her or his problems is to ask the client:  “How were you hoping I might be useful to you?” 

9.      In the case of Beth, it was helpful for the social worker to point out the facts of the case from the police and hospital reports. 

10.  De Jong and Berg believe that an interviewer can take both a not-knowing stance with clients and, at the same time, hold them accountable for their perceptions.  

11.  In cases where the clients have been referred or pressured into services by collaterals (egs. parents or the court) practitioners should think of themselves as having more than one client (i.e. the client and the collaterals). 

12.  In solution-focused interviewing, practitioners try to maintain a “not knowing” stance except in cases where clients say they want something which practitioners strongly believe is not good for them.

13.  Steve de Shazer argues that what practitioners have interpreted in the past as client resistance is more accurately understood as worker resistance to solving problems in ways which fit clients’ normal ways of doing things. 

Multiple Choice

1.      Which of the following is not addressed in the “getting started” phase of solution-focused work? 

a.       Client’s understanding of how the problem affects the client

b.      What the client has tried so far to solve the problem

c.       *Exceptions related to the client’s miracle picture

d.      What is most important to work on first

2.      In order to have a cooperative, working relationship with a client in solution-focused work, which must be present?

a.       *Client must want something

b.      Exceptions

c.       Client must see himself or herself as part of any solution

d.      Client must have tried something already to solve the problem

3.      In the case of Beth in the text, when she was first talking to the social worker, she could best be described as a client who:

a.       wanted something and saw herself as part of a solution.

b.      blamed herself as the source of her problems.

c.       *seemed resistant to changing.

d.      blamed the social worker as the source of her problems.

4.      In the case of Beth in the text, when she finished working with Insoo, she could best be described as a client who:

a.       *wanted something and saw herself as part of a solution.

b.      blamed herself as the source of her problems.

c.       seemed resistant to changing.

d.      blamed the social worker as the source of her problems.

5.      In the case of Beth, Insoo and Beth moved toward a cooperative working relationship by focusing primarily on:

a.       the nature of Beth's problems with her parents.

b.      *defining what Beth wanted to be different.

c.       the errors in the police and hospital reports.

d.     Beth's feelings.