Communicating with Children: the Use of Art in Social Work

Art therapy has been applied in a variety of settings and with a large number of different client groups. It has been used for aesthetic, educational and clinical reasons. One of the main applications in the past has been to measure intelligence. However, the test-retest reliability was found to be poor. For example, intelligence or projective tests in clinical psychology, like the 'Rorschach ink-blot test' often rely on intuitive subjective impressions rather than scientific analysis. In addition they often only consider surface structure not the process of art making. They have, therefore, largely been abandoned and art is no longer used as measure of intelligence in general although it is still a useful means to assess particularly low intelligence.