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Having outlined an approach to the theory and practice of preventive casework, we now address ourselves to our final question: What place should brief, crisis-oriented preventive casework occupy in our total spectrum of services??

We should first recognize our tendency to develop a hierarchy of values, locating brief treatment at the bottom and long-term intensive service at the top, instead of seeing the services as part of a continuum, each important in its own right.

This problem is perhaps as old as social casework itself.

Almost three decades ago Bertha Reynolds undertook a study of short-contact interviewing because of her conviction that short-term casework had an important but neglected place in our network of social services.

Her conclusion has been borne out in the experience of many practitioners: `` short-contact interviewing is neither a truncated nor a telescoped experience but is of the same essential quality as the so-called intensive case work ''.

Thus, casework involving a limited number of interviews is still to be regarded in terms of the quality of service rendered rather than of the quantity of time expended.