Task-Centered Practice

Task-centered practice is a short-term, structured, problem-solving model of social-work intervention in which the worker and client identify a small number of specific target problems the client wants to address, agree on a time-limited contract, and then collaboratively develop and carry out concrete tasks to reduce those problems. Created by William Reid and Laura Epstein in 1972, it was one of the first social-work practice models built deliberately for empirical evaluation, and its emphasis on client-chosen problems, explicit tasks, and bounded time made it a foundation for evidence-based, accountable practice.