Domain III · Intervention and Practice · 32% of the exam
Intervention and Practice: helping relationship, evidence-based methods, evaluation, and supervision
Outline: draftBy The Licensure Professor
Study material in progress. This is a lesson outline, not finished lesson text. Nothing on this page is official exam content. Items were written for this site and checked against published sources. They have not yet been reviewed by a licensed clinical social worker.
Learning objectives
- Build and maintain a helping relationship using empathy, active listening, and strengths-based and empowerment strategies.
- Match interventions to the problem: crisis intervention, trauma-informed care, and evidence-based approaches such as CBT, DBT, MBSR, MI, and EMDR.
- Use contracting, goal setting, case management, and group, family, and couples approaches.
- Evaluate practice and programs, and read basic research designs and measures of reliability and validity.
- Describe the supervisee role, supervision models, and organizational and administrative functions.
Key terms
- Helping relationship
- Empowerment
- Trauma-informed care
- Crisis intervention
- Motivational interviewing
- Harm reduction
- Contracting
- Partializing
- Case management
- Program evaluation
- Reliability and validity
- Supervision models
- Transference and countertransference
Suggested sources
- Hepworth, D. H., Vang, P. D., Blakey, J. M., Schwalbe, C., Evans, C. B. R., Rooney, R., Rooney, G. D., & Strom, K. (2023). Direct social work practice: Theory and skills (11th ed.). Cengage.
- Drisko, J. W., & Grady, M. D. (2019). Evidence-based practice in clinical social work (2nd ed.). Springer.
- Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2023). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change and grow (4th ed.). Guilford Press.
- James, R. K., & Gilliland, B. E. (2017). Crisis intervention strategies (8th ed.). Cengage.
- Corey, M. S., Corey, G., & Corey, C. (2018). Groups: Process and practice (10th ed.). Cengage.
- Rubin, A., & Babbie, E. R. (2025). Research methods for social work (10th ed.). Cengage.
- National Association of Social Workers & Association of Social Work Boards. (2013). Best practice standards in social work supervision. NASW.
- Association of Social Work Boards. (2026). ASWB examination guidebook (08/2026). https://www.aswb.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-Social-Work-Licensing-Exam-Guidebook-5.4.2026.pdf
Ethics content on this section follows the NASW Code of Ethics (National Association of Social Workers).