Moving Beyond Assessment

Book excerpt: Moving Beyond Assessment: A Practical Guide for Beginning Helping Professionals is a text designed to help beginning professionals from social work, nursing, psychology, counseling, and other related disciplines navigate the early stages of working with clients in a variety of settings. The authors are experienced clinicians, supervisors, and professors who have trained hundreds of graduate students to learn how to assess, intervene, and evaluate their work with clients. In addition to the direct practice focus of the book, the authors address issues such as self-care, the basics of neurobiology, working with multi-disciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, and supervision. The text has a user-friendly tone and the authors have included numerous practice vignettes and their own personal and professional experiences to exhibit how the content can be applied to real life settings. Beginning practitioners will find tips, tools, resources, and concrete examples they can use to enhance their work with clients and normalize their experiences in the helping field, while learning how to take care of themselves as professionals. This text is an essential guide for anyone who is seeking to become a helping professional.