Power, Pathological Worldviews, and the Strengths Perspective in Social Work

Grant, Jill; Cadell, Susan

doi:10.1606/1044-3894.3921

Cited by 33 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Saleebey, 2001;Sanders & Munford, 2006;Sousa et al, 2006;Grant & Cadell, 2009) (i) the diagnosis is centred on the possibility of building paths for change, focusing on family expertise, skills and resources and on professionals ability to increase these strengths; (ii) the intervention is developed collaboratively, placing the whole intervention system (agencies, families, professionals and the community) at the forefront of change and (iii) the desired outcome centres on agreeing a way to improve the client's well-being. The main benefit of practice founded on collaboration is to improve the outcomes for families, professionals, agencies and communities by providing what families feel they need and desire for themselves.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The collaborative professional: towards empowering vulnerable families

Sousa¹,

Rodrigues²

2012

Journal of Social Work Practice

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This article describes the authors' journey in an attempt to understand why considerable efforts of professionals working with vulnerable families are not compensated by better results. The authors propose guidelines to support professionals to develop a collaborative approach, which would empower them as well as the families they work with. The guidelines focus on the front-line professionals, whose main tasks include (i) promoting their own resilience (and of other professionals involved) through reflection and supervision; (ii) building up a trusting relationship with families, which can be achieved by being flexible and informal, providing instrumental support, using time in active, extensive and intensive ways and (iii) promoting and reinforcing small positive family achievements during the course of the intervention. The proposal poses a challenge to professionals' actions and expertise as well as to agencies, being simultaneously a response to their aspirations to do better.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The collaborative professional: towards empowering vulnerable families

Sousa¹,

Rodrigues²

2012

Journal of Social Work Practice

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“…This standpoint identifies the resilience of groups or individuals and gives emphasis on strength, potentials, opportunities, and knowledge instead of looking for the limitations (Grant and Cadell, 2009). It is from this perspective that strengths-based approach is comprehended to diverge from traditional deficit models (Natalie, 2011).…”

Section: Guiding Strategic Principles/mechanisms For Developing Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth Unemployment Challenges and Opportunities: the Case of Sierra Leone

Alemu¹

2016

International Journal of Social Science Studies

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Sierra Leone has gone through a ten-year civil conflict which brought considerable destruction, on the livelihoods of many. A good percentage of the population, before the war, was composed of young men and women who provided the labour force for activities on the farms. These youth (15-35 years of age) have undergone serious transformations as a result of the civil conflict. Most of them have got themselves completely disoriented. About 60% of the country"s youth are believed to be structurally unemployed. The study was aimed at assessing the main causes of youth unemployment in Sierra Leone and to develop sustainable employment strategic principles which will enhance the management of youth employment opportunities in the country. Primary data were collected through structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Different reports, policy papers and publications were also reviewed. Legacy of the civil war, mismatch between the demand and supply side of labour, weak entrepreneurship services, rural to urban migration, and low level of involvement in agriculture were among the identified factors that aggravated the youth unemployment rate in the country. The study has also identified strategic directions which could help policy and decision makers in their effort for the development of the youth of the country.

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“…This engendered a sense of respect, caring and connection, and was an integrative idea in that it helped workers to accept that clients had both negative and positive features. As suggested by Grant and Cadell (2009), normalising worker and client struggles as part of the human condition was important to sustaining the strengths-based relationship. A humanistic orientation has always been part of strengths-based practice; as Kisthardt (2012) said, 'by realizing that there is more in our shared experience as human beings that make providers more like participants than different from them, we gain the courage to be warm, caring, empathic, and genuinely affirming of people's own visions' (p. 66).…”

Section: Balancing Partnership and Paternalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representing Latinos

Wallace

2014

Political Research Quarterly

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Strengths-based solution-focused approaches are gaining ground in statutory child protection work, but few studies have asked front line practitioners how they navigate the complex worker-client relationships such approaches require. This paper describes one component of a mixed-methods study in a large Canadian statutory child protection agency in which 225 workers described how they applied the ideas of strengths-based practice in their daily work. Interviews with twenty-four practitioners were analysed using an interpretive description approach. Only four interviewees appeared to successfully enact a version of strengths-based practice that closely mirrored those described by key strengths-based child protection theorists and was fully congruent with their mandated role. They described navigating a shifting balance of collaboration and authority in worker-client relationships based on transparency, impartial judgement, attentiveness to the worker-client interaction and the value that clients were fellow human beings. Their accounts extend current conceptualisations of the worker-client relationship in strengths-based child protection work and are congruent with current understandings of effective mandated relationships. They provide what may be a useful model to help workers understand and navigate relationships in which they must reconcile their own authority and expertise with genuine support for the authority and expertise of their clients.

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Power, Pathological Worldviews, and the Strengths Perspective in Social Work

Cited by 33 publications

References 23 publications

The collaborative professional: towards empowering vulnerable families

The collaborative professional: towards empowering vulnerable families

Youth Unemployment Challenges and Opportunities: the Case of Sierra Leone

Representing Latinos

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