This paper explores some meanings identified for and by social work assessment, and
introduces an explanatory model to consider the development of social work assessment in Malaysia, Nepal, Vietnam and the UK. Understanding what social workers are doing is critical to the moral foundations of practice, and this model allows social workers potentially to locate assessment tasks and functions in the socio-political contexts in which they are undertaken. A sociological model of isomorphic convergence is employed to understand some of the reasons social workers and their organisations practise in these ways. Reflexivity and self-critical
analysis offers possibilities for ethical practice.