New Zealand Based Social Worker’s Perceptions on Assessments of Older Adults and Alcohol Use

This article presents the results from a qualitative study of eight New Zealand registered social workers’ (RSW) perceptions of older adults’ (OA) alcohol use and the influence these perceptions had on their alcohol assessment processes. A grounded theory method (GTM) was used to interpret data gathered from semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed the participants used a ‘perception based’ approach, which influenced their practice and assessment of OAs. The implications and recommendations arising from these findings concern social work education, training and supervision as well as the need to develop an ‘evidenced informed’ model of practice which moves away from a single to multi-hypothesis assessment approach and from perception based to standardised questions.