n social work practice, the strengths perspective has emerged as an alternative to the more common pathology-oriented approach to helping clients. Instead of focusing on clients' problems and deficits, the strengths perspective centers on clients' abilities, talents, and resources. The social worker practicing from this approach concentrates wholly on identifying and eliciting the client's strengths and assets in assisting them with their problems and goals (Saleebey, 2006). Nonetheless, Critical social work seeks to address social injustices, as opposed to focusing on individual people's problems. Critical perspective and prevention propose autonomous and democratic organization which allows people previously silent to express their need and expectations. Prevention is based on the principle of empowerment.
Another journal article focusing on differences in domestic violence in Canada and Quebec by Douglas A. Brownridge(2002) has an interesting result in relation to occurrence of domestic violence and socio-economic status and education. It compares results collected from Quebec and rest of Canada. It finds that women with higher education experienced lower violence in Quebec but women with higher education experienced higher violence in the rest of Canada. This might be because of the notion of liberal views held in Quebec by males, and therefore would feel less threatened by highly educated women. This could also be because of the man is financially dependent on the
Utilizing strengths based perspective with clients enables social workers to focus on the client and family strengths and abilities instead of focusing on the client and family’s problems, bad behaviors and pathologies. The strengths based perspective applies six principles that guide the social worker professional in assisting client’s with the strengths based model; we all have areas of strength, but sometimes it takes an unbiased third party to notice and help others clearly see what they are capable of achieving, even in the midst of their crisis.
The prevalence of domestic violence in the United States is that it is occurring far more often than many individuals would choose to admit. This form of violence is by no means new and culturally the problem itself does not discriminate, there is no specific criteria that completely omits one from becoming a victim of domestic violence. The dynamics of domestic violence consist of the aggressor utilizing violence to maintain dominance and control over the victim. The victimization that is consistent with domestic violence can come in various forms including, physical, sexual, psychological, mental/emotional, and financial. Domestic violence victimization is a cycle that usually is difficult to terminate by many victims as well as aggressors. Individuals involved in abusive relationships continue to remain in them for various reasons such as, maintaining financial stability, desire or hope that things will change overtime, fear that their abuser, will further harm them for leaving the relationship, embarrassment of their situation, or there may be children involved and the victims wants to avoid some of the harsh realities associated with a broken home. Oftentimes domestic violence victims blame themselves for the violence encountered by their abusers, figuring that if they do things differently the next time, maybe they won’t be victimized again by their partner. Conversely, violence committed by abusers is often self-driven and hinges on very minor actions executed by the
According to data from the National Collision Against Domestic Violence, a woman in the United States is fatally shot by a spouse, ex-spouse, or other romantic partner on average every 14 hours. Despite these statistics, there are still many misconceptions about domestic violence both in California and across the United States.
“A pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone. Domestic violence can happen to anyone regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender” (p. 2)
Domestic violence is when physical, mental, economical, and other forms of abuse happen between romantically engaged couples inside of their homes. The typical person who is affected by domestic violence tends to be the female in the relationship however, the male can also be the victim. You do not hear much about men being victims of domestic violence because of the culture of masculinity in America today. The target is typically the person who does not hold any power in the relationship. So if a man is the victim then he seen as having no power which in our culture happens to tell the male than he is not a man and should be ashamed of themselves.
Domestic violence is one of the worlds best kept secret, as an estimated fifteen percent of violent crimes are accounted by intimate partner violence (ncadv.org), yet it is rarely reported, or resulted in a conviction. This issue is prevalent in the United States, and it is a widely represented population, as there are many resources available to those that are victims of this crime. For this literature review, I was interested to see how this heinous crime is seen within Muslim culture. My initial interest sparked from hearing a friend of mine say that the women in her home country of Iran were treated as property, and that what the United States sees as being crime, is just typical behavior there. Another reason that this issue is not commonly
Social work is very diverse, there is not one sole solution, or strength metaphor which can cover all fields. However, there are assessments which can be applied to certain situations, given the practitioners beliefs. “Accessing Clients Strengths: Clinical Assessment for Client Empowerment” is an article written by Charles D. Cowger, and is based on a mainstream contextual understanding that the primary goal of social work is to assist individuals with their relationship to others, and to institutions in a way to promote social and economic justice with regards to the importance of a client strengths perspective for assessment, which, proposes 12 practice guidelines to foster a strengths perspective(Cowger, 1994, p.262).Theory of strengths assessment focuses on two aspects of empowerment, personal empowerment and social empowerment. Personal empowerment dynamic recognizes the uniqueness of each client and their ability to take charge and control of their lives and their own betterment process. The social empowerment dynamic states that personal empowerment is related to opportunity and that individuals behaviors are derived from society. Through social empowerment, the individual plays a key role in shaping their surrounding and vise versa by having various opportunities and access to certain resources.
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
In February 2014, Ray Rice, a professional football player for the Baltimore Ravens, got into a physical altercation with his fiancé in a casino elevator in Atlantic City, NJ. Rice was indicted and charged with aggravated assault and the NFL suspended him for two games. Many thought the NFL’s punishment should have been harsher, but the story quickly faded away. Later, in September of 2014, a full video of the altercation in the elevator surfaced and was released to the media. The video shows Rice and his fiancé arguing and hitting at each other; the video ends with Rice knocking his fiancé unconscious and literally dragging her out of the elevator. He stood there calmly, as if this was a normal occurrence, while casino security and others were trying to help her. Rice, being a public figure, brought the issue of domestic violence to the forefront of all media outlets. For several weeks this was the topic of all new stations, magazines, and internet sites. The public was appalled at Rice’s actions and many were angry at his fiancé for sticking by him. Many questions arose about Rice’s case and domestic violence in general. For example, “Doesn’t he know any better”? “Why did she go on to marry Rice a month after the altercation instead of leaving him”? Should he be allowed to play professional football any longer”? All of these questions and public concerns led me to investigate domestic violence further and the epidemic of it in this country. The main question I
1) What is Domestic violence? According to http://www.stopvaw.org/what_is_domestic_violence2 domestic violence is a pattern of abusive and threatening behaviours that may include physical, emotional, sexual violence. The purpose of domestic violence is to establish and apply power and control over another. Domestic violence is that it’s clearly an act of anger or frustration that someone has either physically or mentally used against someone or thing. From past knowledge I have identified that 80% of women (worldwide) are the victims to Domestic violence and the Men are predominantly the accusers. As in New Zealand we have a moderate amount of crimes committed and 25% of them are abuse. 84% of men are arrested for domestic violence 16% are women.
Chapter 2 in the Chang, Scott, and Decker textbooks talks about the strengths perspective and how we as social workers can apply this perspective in our practice. The article talks about how everyone has strengths, despite all of their problems. Our textbook talks about how we should always look for the strengths in our client; in addition, it is important that we build off of our clients strengths to help them achieve his or her goal. The article also talks about how social workers that help clients uncover their strengths, begin to see changes in the clients mood (positive changes). Our textbook talks about how focusing on what is going right in the clients life, can help make a client feel respected and acknowledge. If we focus on the problems
This study attempts to document the consequences of domestic violence, whether self-inflicted, interpersonal, or collective, on children. Research parameters included children who experienced or witnessed physical, psychological, or sexual violence, as well as deprivation or neglect. A bibliometric approach was taken using an electronic search of peer-reviewed and scholarly databases. The search was narrowed to include only articles published between the years of 2005 and April 2011. 122 articles from eleven countries were collected and analyzed, with the United States and Brazil producing the greatest amount of research. The study reveals the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dysfunction in children who experienced or witnessed
“I object to violence, because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent”, quoted by Mahatma Gandhi. Violence is defined as an unjust or unwarranted exertion of power or force to intentionally injure, damage, or destroy something or someone. Amongst the various types of violence, there is one in particular that has been causing an ongoing debate within societies across the world; this certain type of violence is known as domestic violence. Domestic violence, also known as intimate violence or family violence, is a pattern of violent behaviors that are being used by an individual in a relationship to control his or her partner.() This act of abuse can come in many different forms, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or psychological abuse, and can affect not only the victim, but anyone that he or she may come in contact with.