Discuss experiences you have had with difficult endings, with clients or significant others. What were the reasons for the difficulty, and what strategies might have worked better toward a more constructive ending?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students can be invited to select their own client examples, or instead consider hypothetical clients who are (for example) angry, to whom the social worker has become attached, and with whom the client has unfinished work. They can also select friends and significant others from their own lives, since endings are a part of life for everyone. In reflecting on the termination process, students should address any of the following steps in the process:

• Deciding when to actively implement the process
• Timing the announcement of one’s leaving
• Anticipating the client’s and one’s own reactions
• Appropriately spacing the remaining sessions
• Reviewing intervention gains
• Generalizing intervention gains
• Planning for goal maintenance
• Addressing the client’s remaining needs
• Linking the client with social supports (or another practitioner)
• Formally evaluating the intervention
• Setting conditions and limits on future contact