Social workers have always thought about the environment as multidimensional. As early as 1901, Mary Richmond presented a model of social work case coordination that took into account not only personal dimensions but also family, neighborhood, civic organizations, private charitable organizations, and public relief organizations. Several models for classifying dimensions of the environment have been proposed since Mary Richmond’s time. Social workers (see, e.g., Ashford, LeCroy, & Lortie, 2010) have also been influenced by Uri Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) ecological perspective, which identifies the five interdependent, nested categories or levels of systems presented in Exhibit 1.3. You might notice some similarities between Bronfenbrenner’s model and the one presented in Exhibit 1.1. By adding chronosystems in his later work, Bronfenbrenner was acknowledging the importance of time in person–environment transactions, but this book presents a more fluid, less hierarchical model of person-in-environment than presented by Bronfenbrenner. Some social work models have included the physical environment (natural and built environments) as a separate dimension (see Norton, 2009). There is growing evidence of the impact of the physical environment on human well-being and growing concern about environmental justice issues in the physical environment.
Exhibit 1.2 Definitions and Examples of Dimensions of Person, Environment, and Time