Social workers collaborate with clients/patients in order to help them achieve changes in their lives. Social workers accomplish these changes by first doing very thorough assessments of the "fit" between the client and their multifaceted biopsychosocial environments. On the basis of these thorough assessments, the social worker, in collaboration with the client, identifies strengths or potential strengths in the client and/or their environment that can be utilized to bring about the client's desired life changes.

An example of the social work practice model begins with the social worker receiving a referral from a physician expressing concern that an older person might be "putting their medical health in jeopardy by continuing to live independently." After consulting with the physician, the social worker would talk with the older person to determine how important it was to them to continue living by themselves. If it were very important, the social worker would do all they could to provide the client with the support they need in order to continue living independently. The next step would be to identify strengths in the client or their environment that might help enable them to remain at home. Depending upon the specific client needs, the first place to look might be relatives or friends (e.g., church friends). If one of the medical concerns was the client's not getting nutritional meals, the social worker might explore, a) the older person's ability and motivation to prepare meals for themselves (possibly with assistance), or b) the availability of meals being delivered to them, for instance through a meals on wheels program.

Although there is obviously overlap among the roles of rural health care providers, social workers have specialized skills in assessing the interaction between clients and the complex medical, social, psychological, and economic systems affecting them; and, on the basis of that assessment, deciding where best to strategically intervene (for instance, in relationship to the elderly person described above, it's conceivable that the assistance of a single friend or family member might end up "solving the problem"). Also, social workers are trained to place a primary focus on honoring client preferences as much as possible in seeking healthcare solutions, and on working collaboratively with (versus doing for) the client throughout the whole helping process. Finally, social work emphasizes the importance of facilitating teamwork with other community professionals involved in the helping process-- whether this be teachers, clergy, or formal members of the health care team.