Private and nonprofit practitioners: An exploratory study

This study explores the differences and similarities of social workers in private and nonprofit practice settings. The data suggest there are a number of statistically significant differences in the areas of practice behaviours and attitudes. Significant findings include the private practitioners versus the nonprofit practitioners served a much greater percentage of middle class clients; the private practitioners were also far more likely to use psychodynamic treatment than the nonprofit practitioners. The findings appear to confirm the shift toward a market approach to service delivery in the United States. This redefinition of service delivery to a market approach has resulted in an increasing number of students enrolling in graduate schools of social work with the intent of entering private practice. Critics of this transformation of the profession argue that this change will result in the abandonment of the poor and of the traditional mission of social work: helping people make use of and develop community and social resources to build connections with others.