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Strengths Perspective Of Social Work

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The theory that will be discussed and reviewed is the Strengths Perspective, however, prior to describing the strengths perspective, social workers must first understand the term strength in order to implement the theory successfully. According to Greene and Lee (2002, p. 182) a strength involves, “The capacity to cope with difficulties, to maintain functioning in the face of stress, to bounce back in the face of significant trauma, to use external challenges as a stimulus for growth, and to use social supports as a source of resilience”. Saleebey (2006, pp. 82-84) explains that a strength has the potential to stimulate solutions and growth, and can involve any environmental or personal attribute, which can be within the community where the …show more content…

Building capacity and building potential with access to the appropriate resources, it has a lot of resonance with empowerment as it is a way of reaching the empowerment stage with clients (Wendt, 2015). It also challenges social workers need to ‘help’ or ‘rescue’ as it focuses on the strengths and resilience of clients and is not about coming in and rescuing people, or helping people. It is about reinforcing something different, or growing the alternative stories, which makes it a very active theory (Wendt, 2015). Strengths theory recognizes the power of optimism in people’s lives, the belief in optimism and the power optimism can have in motivating people to change or do things differently (Wendt, 2015). Strengths theory can also be used with other theories, it can serve as a foundation for social workers and can assist in engaging other theories with it, so it does not necessarily have to stand alone (Wendt, …show more content…

As it is geared towards respecting the dignity and worth of every human being, regardless of their current situation, focusing on problems, limitations or diagnoses diminishes a person to a problem-saturated label, which is antithetical to the values of social work. Secondly, the diagnostically driven system which places the social worker in a position of power over the client; social workers determine what is wrong with the client and then determine how best to fix the client’s problems. Strengths-based practice was developed to bring the profession of social work back to its foundation of valuing and collaborating with the client. The strengths perspective continues to be explored and researched today, specifically through the work of the Strengths Institute at the University of

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