The client is at the core of social work. The debate on social work, whether focusing on the profession, ethics, politics and ideology or research, inevitably takes a stand on what is called the client-citizen. This client-citizen is considered if not the only, then at least an essential target of and motive for, social work. The same applies to other human service professions. Their basis lies in the actors who use and need them. The practices and methods of social work may be defined through the client even to the point of being described as client centred. When this is the case, the aim is to underline that the client, as the partner of the social worker, has a guiding role for the content of social work. Such client centredness has become a self-evident ideal for social work. Good social work starts out from the client and the client’s needs, and bad social work is understood as the opposite of this, as a work approach which makes the client into an object.