3.4: Strengths-Based Perspective
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)Strengths-Based Approach 
The Strengths-Based Approach, also known as the strengths perspective, emphasizes that every person, group, family, and community has strengths; and every community or environment is full of resources (Johnson & Yanca, 2010). Often attributed to Bertha Reynolds, a mid-twentieth century social worker, and Dennis Saleeby a late twentieth century scholar, the approach actually has foundation in the work of Black scholars and social workers. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the strength of Blacks to adapt and survive in hostile conditions. In the early twentieth century, Black social workers such as Birdye Henrietta Haynes, Elizabeth Ross Haynes, and others focused less on pathologizing Black people and more on the strengths and resilience strategies within families and communities (Wright et al., 2021).
Sometimes society and individuals are focused on the negative impacts of their lives and have a difficult time identifying the positive aspects of their lives and situations. Being strengths-based is different from toxic positivity, which involves dismissing negative emotions and responding to distress with false reassurances.
In the Strengths Approach, it is the human services worker’s job to help the client identify their strengths. Often clients with whom we work with are only able to identify the negative impacts of their lives and have a difficult time identifying the positive aspects of their lives and situations. When using the Strengths Approach not only is the worker helping the client to identify their personal strengths, but they are also helping the client identify local resources to help the client needs.
This approach focuses on the strengths and resources that the client already has rather than building on new strengths and resources. The reasoning behind the Strength Approach is to help clients with immediate needs, and to help with finding solutions to immediate problems.
The development of the Strengths Approach is based off two very important principles:
- every person, group, family, and community has strengths
- every community or environment is full of resources (Johnson & Yanca, 2010)
Figure 1.11. A strengths-based approach emphasizes the resources, resilience and strengths within the individual and their community.
Figure 1.11 Image Description
This approach focuses on the strengths and resources that the client already has rather than building new strengths and resources. There is an emphasis on the client seeing and acknowledging their own assets and value. The reasoning behind the strengths approach is to help clients find solutions to immediate problems, and to identify and build strengths to use in the future.
Introduction to Human Services 2e Copyright © by Elizabeth B. Pearce. All Rights Reserved.
Seven important principles of the strengths perspective:
- People are recognized as having many strengths and the capacity to continue to learn, grow and change.
- The focus of intervention is on the strengths and aspirations of the people we work with.
- Communities and social environments are seen as being full of resources.
- Service providers collaborate with the people they work with.
- Interventions are based on self-determination.
- There is a commitment to empowerment.
- Problems are seen as the result of interactions between individuals, organizations or structures rather than deficits within individuals, organizations or structures.
1. People are recognized as having many strengths and the capacity to continue to learn, grow and change.
Saleebey (1992c) suggests that individuals and groups “have vast, often untapped and frequently unappreciated reservoirs of physical, emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, social, and spiritual energies, resources and competencies” (p. 6). People who come to social workers and youth workers for assistance with some problem, are more than that problem, they also have strengths and abilities which have allowed them to survive, if not thrive, in the face of the challenges they meet.
As Saleebey (1992b) describes it:
- People are often doing amazingly well, the best they can at the time, given the difficulties they face and the known resources available to them.
- People have survived to this point – certainly, not without pain – but with ideas, will, hopes, skills, and other people, all of which we need to understand and appreciate in order to help.
- Change can only happen when you collaborate with clients’ aspirations, perceptions, and strengths and when you firmly believe in them. (p.42)
2. The focus of intervention is on the strengths and aspirations of the people we work with.
Saleebey’s last point just quoted, points to the principle that in strengths-based approaches the focus is on the strengths and aspirations of the people we worth with and their environments. Frequently service providers have focused on problems, deficits and pathologies which Graber and Nice (1991, quoted in Miley, O’Melia & DuBois, 2001) suggests “empowers the problem and disempowers the person” (p. 79). The strengths perspective argues that people are motivated to use their capacity to change when the focus is on their strengths.
A focus on strengths does not mean that people’s concerns and problems are ignored but they are not the main focus of the intervention. According to Saleebey (1992a) the people we work with have
Taken steps, summoned up resources, and coped. We need to know what they have done, how they have done it, what they have learned from doing it, who was involved in doing it, what resources (inner and outer) were available in their struggle to surmount their troubles (p. 172).
3. Communities and social environments are seen as being full of resources.
When social environments or communities are viewed as being “pathological, hostile, and even toxic” (Kisthardt, 1992, P. 66) potential helping resources are often overlooked and interventions in these contexts may be avoided. Strengths-based approach sees the social environment as being “a lush topography of resources and possibilities” with “individuals and institutions who have something to give, something that others may desperately need: knowledge, succor, and actual resource, or simply time and place” (Saleebey, 1992c, p.7).
The social environment provides important resources for everybody, not just clients. A wide range of groups and institutions can provide support including family, friends, work, church, sporting groups, and local businesses. A strengths-based approach encourages service providers to seek out the full range of support available in a local community rather than relying on welfare and specialist support organizations.
4. Service providers collaborate with the people they work with.
People are usually experts on their own situation and Saleebey (1992b) argues that, for service providers, the role of expert or professional may not provide the “best vantage point from which to appreciate client strengths” (p. 7). Thus strengths-based approaches focus on “collaboration and partnership between helping professionals and clients.
Saleebey (1992b) suggests that the approach to working with people is
A give-and-take that begins with the demystification of the professional as expert, an operating sense of humility on the part of the helper, the establishment of an egalitarian transaction, the desire to engage clients on their own terms, and a willingness to disclose and share (Freire, 1973; Rose 1990). (Saleebey, 1992b, p.42).
5. Interventions are based on self determination.
If there is a collaborative relationship which avoids the expert/client relationship, then it is unlikely that the service provider will claim the expertise to decide whether or not a person is capable of making decisions for themselves: of self determination. As Poertner & Ronnau (1992) suggests
Even well-meaning service providers are too quick to impose their own views of the world upon their clients. The professional’s investment in, and emotional attachment to, their own theory of helping leads them to believe they know what’s best. This tendency to exclude the client from all but the most basic steps in the helping process is even more characteristic of those who work with adolescents and children (p. 117).
Service providers do not need to judge: “a client’s expressed aspirations are accepted as sincere. Acceptance and validation replace scepticism about what clients can ‘realistically’ achieve” (Weick et al., 1989, p.353). When people are seen as being experts on their own situation then they should be the ones to “determine the form, direction, and substance” of the intervention (Rapp, 1992, 9. 48).
Weick et al (1989) argue that
It is impossible for even the best trained professional to judge how another person should best live his or her life. The nonjudgemental attitude in social work dictates not only that social workers should not judge but that social workers cannot judge. Instead, the principles of knowing what is best and doing what is best places the power of decision where it should be – with the person whose life is being lived (p. 353).
6. There is a commitment to empowerment.
Although empowerment is almost a cliché in family and community work; it remains an important concept (Sullivan & Rapp, 1994). Empowerment is consistent with a collaborative approach and client self determination. Staples (1990, quoted in Sullivan & Rapp, 1994) defines empowerment as “the ongoing capacity of individuals or groups to act on their behalf to achieve a greater measure of control over their lives and destinies” (p. 92-93).
Because of the variety of factors which can influence person’s capacity to act on his or her own behalf, it is important to recognise that empowerment can have personal, interpersonal and structural dimensions (Miley, O’Melia & DuBois, 2001). Sullivan and Rapp (1994) suggests that empowerment is analogous to conscientisation and animation which imply “a redistribution or recapturing of power, both personal and social” (p. 93). According to Saleebey (1992b) consciousness raising, which also contributes to empowerment, means that consumers:
Begin to develop a less contaminated and constricted view of their situation and identity, and they take on a firmer appreciation of how their lives have been shackled by institutions, agencies, and ideologies. In other words, consumers are assisted in coming to a more authentic sense of who they are, what they can do, and what they want to do (p. 42).
7. Problems are seen as the result of interactions between individuals, organizations or structures rather than deficits within individuals, organizations or structures.
This is a principle is not as frequently identified in the literature, but it is a useful distinction. In models of family and community work which focus on deficits and pathologies, the problem lies within the person: the person is the problem. According to Cohen (1999) these approaches tend to focus on individualistic rather than social-environmental explanations of human problems. From a strengths perspective, problems are frequently the result of interactions between people, organizations or structures. By focusing on how the interactions contribute to the situation, as well as concentrating on people’s strengths, it is possible to avoid blaming the victim (Saleebey, 1992c).
Attribution: Stuart, G. (2012). What is strengths perspective? Sustaining Community.