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What are Strengths based Practices all About?

What are Strengths based Practices all About?

Venkat Pulla
Charles Sturt University, Australia

Calcutta, she would often respond: Find your own Calcutta.
behind one sees the path..
Antonio Machado (1979)

Strengths Based Practices (SBPs) concentrates on the inherent strengths of
individuals, families groups and organisations deploying peoples personal strengths
crippling, labeling and stigmatized language. Descriptions and pathology owned by
persons groups and organizations that suggest acceptance of their condition as hopeless
or helpless to change are constructively challenged through SBPs. Strengths based
What does not work? And what might work presently making it important for
facilitators and those desiring change to be integral to this process of change. This
introductory paper provides a birds eye view of the assumptions, and discuses its
core elements
Keywords: Resilience, Strengths Based Practice, Strengths Approach, Social Work.

In tune with the Positivity Wave(s) that are currently sweeping the planet, several
exciting and new approaches are being forwarded in all practices that involve human
interactions. Strength based practice in simple terms present approaches that promote
resilience as opposed to dealing with deficits (Pulla V., 2006). Strength based practices
are gaining impetus globally in diverse fields of human services management, health


Papers in Strength Based Practice

care, education and training reminding that all environments have resources and that
in every society individuals, and institutions are willing to assist each other to cause
human wellbeing. The principles of caring and caretaking, nurturing and ensuring
that members of our society and our organisations in turn become resilient and
hopeful is clearly within the scope of strengths approaches.
There is something very inward looking about this practice. Teachers in the schools
are seriously considering how best to make their students understand what they really
want them to understand. HRD Managers have started thinking about strength
based performance appraisal while dealing with their employees. Community groups in
Asia and the Pacific region have been dealing with self-reliance and indigenous
development for several decades. Some of these self reliance experiences can be tweaked
to reflect in strength based practice (Pulla V., 2006).
families groups and organisations deploying peoples personal strengths to aid their
recovery and empowerment. SBPs are empowering alternatives to traditional
crippling, labeling and stigmatized language. Descriptions and pathology owned by
persons groups and organizations that suggest acceptance of their condition as hopeless
or helpless to change are constructively challenged through SBPs. Strengths based
In 2006, the author of this paper launched the first international conference on strengths
based practice in India, the land of Gandhi (Pulla, V, 2006, pp. 120126). The core
values of Gandhian way of development have been being fair and respectful to all,
focusing on strengths, assisting a self directed transformation to bring forward
changes that are meaningful and significant to people and to reflect on how they want
their situation to be ( Pulla, V., 2006). Gandhian mantra may sound a shade simplistic
description of what is being canvassed as strengths approach today, but the core
elements that he deployed in the context of communities and ensuring sea change in
the fabric of Indian society undoubtedly provides the fundamental context for
community engagement practice in the western world today.
It is a tribute to Gandhi that he applied only positive thoughts and positive strategies
across a wide range of social institutions including the British raj that had India and
several other colonies in its grip. Resonating constitutes the basis of strengths based
practice everyone has strengths. We have experiences, abilities and knowledge that
assist us in our lives. If we are lucky, we also have a variety of people around us who
act as a support network for us. A Strengths based Approach allows people to identify

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


and build on their strengths so that they can reach their goals, and retain or regain
independence in their daily lives. Why work in this way? Long-term studies in strengthbased care have proven that the approach improves self-care abilities, confidence, and
self-esteem of clients allowing them to independently carry out daily living activities.

The Strengths Approach

A strengths based approach operates on the assumption that people have strengths
and resources for their own empowerment. Traditional teaching and professional
development models concentrate on deficit based approaches, ignoring the strengths
and experiences of the participants. In strengths based approach the focus is on the
individual not the content. Drawing on appreciative inquiry, strengths based
methodologies do not ignore problems. Instead they shift the frame of reference to
define the issues. By focusing on what is working well, informed successful strategies
support the adaptive growth of organisations and individuals. A belief and an
approach that every individual, group, organisation and community has strengths
allows us to focuses on identifying, mobilizing, and honouring the resources, assets,
wisdom, and knowledge that every person, family, group, or community has. This
processes of re-discovery with the community or individuals helps, assists in healing
and ensuring that their full potential is brought out for creating meaningful patterns that
can see as being useful. An opportunity there fore is offered to fathom their inner
strengths. The Strengths Perspective recognises that for the most part of life, people
face adversity, become resilient and resourceful and learn new strategies to overcome
adversity. It would be pertinent to consider resilience in the context of strengths
perspective as the opportunity and capacity of individuals to navigate their way to
psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that may pull together during
crisis and provide them an opportunity and capacity individually and collectively to
negotiate for life following adversity in appropriate and culturally meaningful ways
(Pulla, V., 2012). Thus using clients personal strengths and in discovering resources
in the environments to fulfil the clients needs and to enhance the clients resilience
(Norman, 2000). In fact the environment is conceptualises as the helping
environment, in a strengths based practice (Early and GlenMaye, 2004, p. 113).
As a practitioner and facilitator of strengths approach, people told me that at times
their negative experiences bring them down, at the same time I saw as the process
work commences people recognise that even in their most adverse situation they have
displayed their strengths.
The emphasis is certainly on getting up to see opportunities to growth and
development. It would be nave to think that a strengths perspective allows social
workers to casually taciturn the real pains and troubles that affect our clients and our
societies. It is widely acknwedged that poverty, child sexual abuse, and violence


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towards elderly, torture and racism all these are real problems and they exist.
Saleebey articulated the central belief systems that strengths perspective entails in his
first published article on Power in the People: Strengths and Hope, in the year 2000
as follows:
The strengths perspective does not require one to discount the grip and
thrall of addictions or the humiliating, frightening anguish of child abuse, or
the unbidden disorganization and confusion of psychosis. But from the
vantage point of a strengths perspective, it is as wrong to deny the possible just
as it is to deny the problem. And the strengths perspective does decry the
intemperate reign of psychopathology and illness as the central civic, moral,
and medical categorical imperative. Adherents of the strengths perspective do
not believe, with good reason, that most people who are the victims of abuse
or their own rampant appetites, or that all people who have been traumatized
inevitably become damaged goods (Saleebey, 2000).
Clearly we are unaware of the upper limits of human capacity to grow and change,
therefore the message is to take the individual, group, and community aspirations
seriously. Strengths Approach allows us as human service workers to go beyond the
assessment, diagnosis, or profiling and presenting verdicts on peoples lives. If we aim
social work to be a profession that work with people to build their hopes, values,
aspirations, and visions, then strengths approach obviously lets us deal with all those
possibilities through a collaborative pathway. For this to happen we need to be open
to the idea that our clients do have the wisdom, knowledge, and experience that they
bring with them and that in combination with the specialized skills and experience
that the facilitator may have a valuable outcome can be created. This could not
happen if the end user voice is not heard and valued at all levels of management of

Some Common Myths about Strengths-Based Practice

It is just a glorified version of positive thinking.

Its really about reframing peoples perception to find good even in the worst
It basically re-labels weaknesses as strengths.
It ignores the reality that serious symptoms and problems do exist and continue
to persist.
Strengths-Based Practice assesses the inherent strengths of a clients people
employees or family, and then builds on them.

Why Use It?

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


It is an empowering alternative to traditional human resource development

methodologies that tend towards describing or diagnosing human motivation and
human competencies functioning in terms of deficits and may offer un-related
alternatives. Strengths approach avoids the use of stigmatising terminology, which
people in need may have gotten used to and eventually accept, and feel helpless to
change and contribute their future. It fosters hope within people by focusing on what
is or has been historically successful for them in their personal, professional and or
even career contexts, thereby exposing precedent successes as the groundwork for
realistic expectations. It inventories the positive building blocks that already exist in
the environment of the changer seeker which can serve as the foundation for future
growth and change for him or her self and it reduces the power and authority barriers
in number of situations such as employees and their managers or the clients and their
therapists, the communities and the social worker by,
Promoting the client to the level of expert in regards to what has worked, what
does not work, and what might work in their personal, professional and work
group situation.
Placing anyone in power or expertise in the role of facilitator, partner or guide.
And lastlyit works (Pulla, V., 2006).

Empowerment, Ecosystem, and the Strengths Based Practices

The strengths perspective originated in response to criticism of the deficit-oriented
psychotherapeutic model that dominated social work practice (Guo and Tsui, 2010;
Saleebey, 1992). Different strengths based approaches to practice emerged in late
1980s as alternatives to the dominant models. The impetus for strengths based social
work practice arrived at a time in US when helping professions were saturated with
psychosocial approaches based on individual, family, and community pathology,
deficits, problems, abnormality, victimization, and disorder (Saleebey, 1996, p.296).
The strengths perspective is rooted in ecosystem and empowerment theories with
underpinnings of humanistic philosophy. According to Johnson (1998), ecosystem
theory provided a foundation for the integrated, generalist social work practice model
and revived the core concept of person-in-environment or how people and their
environments fit (Miley, OMelia, and DuBois, 2004, p. 33). In fact, Weick and
colleagues (1989), in a seminal article about the strengths perspective, stated that
the personal history and unique composite of personality characteristics of
individuals interacts constantly with the political, economic, social, and natural
forces in society (Weick, Rapp, Sullivan, and Kisthardt, 1989, p. 353). Because of
their affinities, the combination of strengths based practices and new ecosystem
approaches is increasingly being used in social work practice. Therefore, Guo and
Tsui (2010) advocate for the adoption of a reflective practice model that creates a


Papers in Strength Based Practice

strengths based social work practice model that promotes not only the strengths of
service users but also the capacities of the social work profession (p. 234).
Empowerment as a proactive process in which individuals and groups gain power,
access to resources, and control over their own lives is central to strengths approach
(Robbins, Chatterjee, and Canda, 2006, p. 94). Personal empowerment and social
empowerment are two interdependent and interactive dynamics achieved
simultaneously which characterize client empowerment. Personal empowerment
recognizes the clients uniqueness and it is analogous to self-determination; that is,
clients provide direction to the process, take control of their lives, while client social
empowerment provides him or her resources and opportunity to play an important
role in his or her environment and in the shaping of that environment (p. 263).
Empowerment theories identify and help individuals and communities to recognize
barriers and dynamics that allow oppression to persist as well as circumstances and
actions that promote change, human empowerment, and liberation. Considering that
the Strengths Perspective is used to build on peoples aspirations, strengths, resources,
and resiliency and to engage in actions pursuing social justice and personal well-being
(Robbins et al., 2006), it can be considered a theory of empowerment. The strengths
perspective is committed to promoting social and economic justice considering that
social work practice deals with transactions between person and environment in
which the dynamics of power and power are embedded. Client empowerment is
central to a strengths based practice and the discovery of clients strengths nurtures
that empowerment (Cowger, 1994).
In addition, the Strengths Perspective has an emphasis on positive qualities and
attributes, including talents, knowledge, abilities, and aspirations to reclaim personal
power in their lives (C.A. Rapp and Goscha, 2006; Saleebey, 1997, Weick et al.,
1989 ).
Strengths based practices such as solution-focused therapy (Berg and De Jong, 1996),
the individual placement and support model of supported employment (Becker and
Drake, 2003), positive youth development and resilience approaches (Benard, 2004),
and asset-building model of community development (Kretzmann and McKnight,
1993), and several writings from the Kansas School of Social Work, ((Chamberlain,
1991; Chamberlain and Rapp, 1991; C.A. Rapp, 1993; Saleebey, 1992; Weick et al.,
1989) field studies in areas such as people in poverty (Jones and Bricker-Jenkins,
2002), physical and sexual abuse (Anderson, 2001, 2010), older adults (Fast and
Chapin, 2002), family violence (Postmus, 2000), secondary trauma (Bell, 2003),
spirituality (Canda and Furman, 2010), and substance abuse (R.C. Rapp, 2006) have
contrbuted to the development of strengths approach in social work.

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


The strengths perspective is impacted by a variety of concepts and perspectives.

According to Saleebey (2001a), the ideas about healing, wholeness, and wellness that
challenge the medical model; the empowerment and liberation movements within
and outside of social work; the evolving resilience research and practice; the assetsbased community building approaches; the power of mind and health organization
approaches to individual and community change; solution focused and narrative
approaches to therapy; the research on hope, positive expectations and possibility; all
of these extend links to, and embolden the strengths perspective (p. 221).
However, the strengths perspective does not consist of only a positive reframing of
a problem, being nice, or compiling a list of strengths (Early and GlenMaye, 2004;
Saleebey, 1996). It refers to a consistent focus on identifying client strengths and
resources and mobilizing resources that directly or indirectly improve the situation
(Early and GlenMaye, 2004, p. 123).
With the purpose of clarifying what constitutes a strengths based practice, Rapp,
Saleebey, and Sullivan (2005) identified six hallmarks that characterize strengths
based practices:
1. It is goal oriented: Social workers invite clients to define goals for their lives.
Client-set goal attainment is the indicator social workers can use for evaluation
2. Systematic assessment of strengths: Strengths based practice uses a systematic set
of protocols for assessing and documenting strengths, with an emphasis on the
present (although past resources and strategies can also be useful).
3. The environment is seen as rich in resources: the natural community is the main
source of opportunities, supports, resources, and people. a central notion is that
the path to goal attainment is the matching of client desires, strengths, and
environment resources (C.A. Rapp et al., 2005, p. 82).
4. Explicit methods are used for using client and environmental strengths for goal
attainment. For instance, in strengths case management, the strengths assessment
is used to help clients set goals, elicit resources, set short-term goals and tasks, and
guide role and responsibility assignments (C.A. Rapp and Goscha, 2006).
5. The relationship is hope-inducing: the relationship is clearly focused on increasing
the hopefulness of the client through an empowering relationship.
6. The provision of meaningful choices is central and clients have the authority to
choose: The social workers role is to extend the list of choices, clarifying them,
and supporting the clients to become confident and to take the authority to direct
the process.
While the strengths perspective encourages the exploration of possibilities and
resources, it does not overlook the problems that clients bring. Yet, a strengths based
practitioner will spend little time trying to understand the causes of the problem or


Papers in Strength Based Practice

labeling it (Early and GlenMaye, 2004). This perspective acknowledges and takes
problems, needs, and challenges in consideration. Often, these problems, situation,
and challenges are where clients begin, what is most urgent, what they are compelled
to talk about. However, the strength based practitioner goes beyond the challenges
ahead and does not make them the priority or sole focus of intervention. Indeed, the
strengths perspective believes in a resilient and self-righting capacity, opening the
possibility of a fulfilling life:
The strengths perspective does not deny the grip and thrall of addictions and
how they can morally and physically sink the spirit and possibility of any
individual. But it does deny the overweening reign of psychopathology as civic,
moral, and medical categorical imperative. It does deny that most people are
victims of abuse or of their own rampant appetites. It denies that all people who
face trauma and pain in their lives inevitably are wounded or incapacitated or
become less than they might (Saleebey, 1996, p. 297). In consequence, the
strengths model allows us to see possibilities rather than problems, options rather
than constraints, wellness rather than sickness, which, once seen, can be

Underlying Assumptions
Given its humanistic roots, at the core of the Strengths Perspective is the belief that
humans have the capacity for growth and change (Early and GlenMaye, 2004). In
addition, believing that people are capable of making their own choices and taking
charge of their own lives promotes empowerment. It means that human beings have
the potential to use their strengths and overcome adversity as well as to contribute to
society (Cowger, 1994). It implies a belief that people are doing the best they can
(Weick et al., 1989), as is reflected in the following underlying assumptions:
Every individual and every environment have strengths and resources, i.e.
Knowledge, talents, capacities, skills, and resources to mobilize in order to pursue
their aspirations (Saleebey, 2009).
People who face adversity typically develop ideas, capacities, and strategies that
eventually serve them well (Saleebey, 2009). In other words, every individual is
All human beings have an innate capacity for health and self-righting, which is a
drive, a life force (Weick, 1992), that heals and transforms.
Almost always, people know what is right for them. This requires a nonjudgmental
attitude; instead, the principles of knowing what is best and doing what is best
places the power of decision where it should bewith the person whose life is
being lived (Weick et al., 1989, p. 353).
A personal, friendly, empathic, and accepting relationship provides the atmosphere
for healing, transformation, regeneration, and resilience.

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


A positive orientation to the future is more useful for healing and helping than
the preoccupation with the past.
It is possible to find the seeds for health and self-righting, even in maladaptive
responses or patterns of behavior, since individuals may be trying to satisfy some
need for respect, connection, affection, or control.

How to Find Strengths?

The strengths perspective provides content and structure for the assessment of
achievable alternatives, the mobilization of competencies to promote change, and the
building of self-confidence to promote hope (Kirst-Ashman and Hull, 2002).
According to Saleebey (2006), almost anything can be considered as strength under
certain conditions (p. 82). Central to this finding is where they do emerge from? For
instance, a person who is agreeable may be engaging and attractive to play a role in
building relationships. Certainly if he or she is disposed to being always agreeable and
does not have any boundaries to the others it could be due to their fear of losing
them. Facilitation in those situations requires that the individual is made aware that
he or she needs to work toward his or her own goals or aspirations as well.
A strengths based practice working tool is its assessment with no rigid boundaries. It
is constantly updated through the partnership and collaboration between client and
social worker or the organisations and the facilitator, thus a strengths based assessment
is both, a process and a product. It is a process because through an assessment, strengths
based facilitator help clients define their situations, evaluate, and give meaning to
those factors that impact their situations. The assessment process helps clients to tell
their stories, according to their unique socially constructed reality and thus, this
process is multicausal, interactive, and constantly changing (Cowger, 1994).
Strengths based practitioners need to explore the clients experiences in order to find:
What people have learned and know about themselves, others, and their world
(Early and GlenMaye, 2004; Saleebey, 2006, 2009).
Personal qualities, traits, talents, and virtues that reside in people; display of some
of them during crises and after trauma, survivors discover inner strengths, utilize
the ones that they know, and also develop new ones (Early and GlenMaye, 2004;
Saleebey, 1997; Weick et al.
Cultural and personal stories and lore, which have been a deep source of strength
for human kind providing guidance, stability, heritage, belonging, or transformation.
Peoples sense of pride, defined by Wolin and Wolin (1993) as the survivors
pride in overcoming the odds.
Personal and familial narratives of survival and redemption can provide strategies,
tools, symbols, and metaphors for rebound.


Papers in Strength Based Practice

Researching and re-discovering the community and its different resources, which
are frequently overlooked during presenting crisis.
Family traditions, rituals, and the combination of the strengths of the nuclear
and extended family members (Early and GlenMaye, 2004).
Spiritual and world views that provide with clues around essential holistic quality
of being.
Personal hopes and dreams, which, with help, can be recovered and revitalized.

For this perspective, social workers have an opportunity to create enabling niches, as
they assist people transform their lives by individually tailoring case management to
each persons unique needs and by identifying, securing, and sustaining the personal
and environmental resources needed (C. A. Rapp and Goscha, 2006, p. 54).
Evidently, this perspective underscores the human capacity for resilience (Robbins et al.,
2006). Indeed, a strengths based assessment should follow these guidelines (Cowger,
1994; Saleebey, 1997, 2009):
Give preeminence to the clients understanding of the facts: The central focus of
the assessment is the clients view of the situation as well as the clients feelings
and meanings about it. Cognitive, mental or intrapersonal assessments of the
client are only relevant if they clarify the current situation or if they can help us
identify strengths to use with the situation. Indeed, the process of empowerment
begins by who defines the situation:
Many alienated people have been named by otherslabeled and diagnosedin a
kind of total discourse. The power to name oneself and ones situation and condition
is the beginning of real empowerment (Saleebey, 1996, p. 303).
Believe the client: The belief that clients are trustworthy is central to the Strengths
perspective. (Early and GlenMaye, 2004). Social workers need to re-view their
attitude; that is they need to suspend their initial disbelief in clients Thus, it takes
courage and diligence on the part of social workers to regard professional work
through this different lens (Saleebeyp. 297, 2009).
Discover what the client wants.
Move the assessment toward personal and environmental strengths: solutions
to difficult situations typically lie in strengths. This is not as easy as it would
seem, as the proposition is that client strengths are central to the helping
relationship is simple enough and seems uncontroversial as an important
component of practice. Yet much of the social work literature suggests
otherwise (Cowger, 1994, p. 262).
make assessment of strengths multidimensional: both internal and external
strengths are necessary to solve a situation, as well as the examination of power
relationships in person-environment transactions.

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


discover the clients uniqueness: assessment must be individualized to understand

the clients unique situation.
use the clients language: the product of the assessment should use a language
that the client can understand (Weick et al., 1989, p. 354). The feeling of
ownership is only feasible when the assessment is open, transparent, and
avoid blame and blaming: blaming typically leads nowhere; it only deters
motivation to solve the situation and increases learned helplessness.
avoid cause and effect thinking because they are usually based on simplistic
cause-effect relationships that do not consider the multiple dimensions and
complexity of the clients realities.
avoid diagnosing: diagnosis is understood in the context of pathology, deviance,
and deficits.
Saleebey (2006, p. 87) identified several questions that may be useful to identify
strengths: survival questions (e.g., How have you managed to survive this far given all
the challenges you have had to contend with?); support questions (e.g., Who are the
special people on whom you can depend?); exemption questions (e.g., When things
were going well in life, what was different?); possibility questions (e.g., What are your
special talents and abilities?); esteem questions (e.g., When people say good things
about you, what are they likely to say?); perspective questions (e.g., What are your
ideas about your current situation?); change questions (e.g., What has worked in the
past to bring a better life for yourself?); among others. These questions are not
presented as a protocol and are intended to direct the helpers attention during
conversations with clients (Saleebey, 2009).

What Makes Change Possible?

A strengths based practitioner attempts to understand a client in terms of her or his
strengths. This involves a systematical examination of the clients knowledge, resources,
skills, and aspirations (Early and GlenMaye, 2004; Saleebey, 2009). By actively listening
to the clients stories and narratives, a helper can discover the clients assets, abilities,
and resources, as well as his or her concerns and challenges (Saleebey, 2006). Strupp
(cited by Saleebey, 2006), who has been researching psychotherapies and positive change
for decades, has repeatedly found that the most important factor across schools of
psychotherapy is the quality of the helping relationship.
If we take into consideration that human beings build themselves into the world only
by creating meaning, which is embedded in culture and environment, then we can
understand the relevance of understanding the situation from the clients perspective.
Indeed, oppressed peoples typically have their stories buried under the stereotypes.


Papers in Strength Based Practice

Removing oppression and emancipating the visions and hopes of the oppressed involves
a process of reconstruction, which ultimately is our role as social workers. Thus, it is
a part of the work toward liberation to collaborate in the projection of peoples stories,
narratives, and myths outward to the institutions that have ignored or marginalized
them(Saleebey, 1996, p. 301).
When clients seek help, they are usually in a vulnerable position; they have relatively
little power which is often associated with the reason why they seek help. The strengths
perspective provides for a balanced power relationship between social workers and
clients, by reinforcing client competence and thereby mitigating the significance of
unequal power. To minimize the power imbalance between worker and client, it is
also important to make assessment a joint activity in which the worker inquires,
listens, and assists client in discovering, articulating, and clarifying whereas the client
provides direction to the content of the assessment.
A positive relationship between the social worker and the client is a key factor in the
process of recovery. The most important features of an effective helping relationship,
according to Rogers (1961), are empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive
regard. These attitudes have been found essential for the healing process since it involves
a nonjudgmental approach and a strong belief in the positive nature of human
beings. Saleebey (2001b) includes expectancy, hope, and the placebo effect, as they are
associated with positive expectations (the helper believes in the clients inner power
to transform his/her reality). This expectation mobilizes hope and the possibility of a
different future (Saleebey, 2001b).
For strengths based practitioners, collaborating and partnering to achieve the clients
dreams and aspirations is crucial. A personal, empathic, and accepting relationship
provides the atmosphere for healing, transformation, regeneration, and resiliency
(Saleebey, 2006). Rapp (cited in Saleebey, 2006), considers an effective helping
relationship as purposeful, reciprocal, friendly, trusting, and empowering (p. 80),
and with positive expectations. Indeed, as Saleebey (1997) states, the role of the social
worker is to help to create a dialogue of strength, in which the strengths based
practitioner becomes a translator who helps people see that they already possess much
of what they need to proceed on their chosen path (Weick et al., 1989, p. 354).
A growing body of literature shows that the client is actually the responsible for the
changes that take place in this process (Blundo, 2001). What changes and how it
changes depend on what the client brings; in other words, what has been called the
extra therapeutic change accounts for 40% of the change in the clients outcomes.
The collaborative and empathetic relationship (warm, accepting, understanding, and
encouraging worker as perceived by the client) accounts for 30% of this change. The
placebo effect accounts for 15% of this change; this means that the belief in the
possibility of change, the increase in hope for a different situation is change-inducing.

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


Repeatedly, studies have shown that our techniques or clinical interventions only
account for 15% of the change in clients outcomes (Blundo, 2001). Consequently, our
focus should move to understanding how clients make these changes and supporting
them in their unique circumstances (Blundo, 2001), with their unique resources and
strategies, working toward their unique dreams, hopes, and aspirations.
Evidently, language matters in social work practice. The kind of rhetoric social
workers use preserves or annuls the possibility and promise of their clients. Certain words
are central to the strengths perspective: Empowerment, resilience, membership,
health and wellness, and the like (Saleebey, 1996). People are competent, resilient,
and responsible and valued members of a group or community. Strengths based
practitioners appreciate believe in the restorative powers intrinsic to human beings and
their bodies; emotions can have a profound impact on the overall health and wellness
of individuals. Thus, believing in the hardiness and wisdom of the human body
implies the belief in the possibility of overcoming adversity inherent to all individuals
(Saleebey, 1996).
The strengths perspective demands social workers to change from a pathology-focused
paradigm to a possibility-focused paradigm. This shift is more than theoretical; it
demands a deep inner transformation. As Saleebey (2001b) insists, to embrace a
resilience/strengths model is not just a matter of acquiring some new techniques or a
different vocabulary it is a matter of changing ones heart and mind- a personal
paradigm shift (p. 13). The real belief in the clients capacity for change is what makes
the difference. Indeed, the strengths perspective demands practitioners to adopt a
different way of looking at individuals, families, and communities:
All must be seen in the light of their capacities, talents, competencies,
have become through circumstance, oppression, and trauma. The strengths
approach requires an accounting of what people know and what they can do,
however inchoate that may sometimes seem (Saleebey, 1996, p. 297).

As the literature reports, as clients recognize and develop new strengths, they continue to
gain power and growth. An emphasis on the individual and environmental strengths
seem to act as a stimulus for further growth and development, leading individuals to
contribute, not only to their personal goals and dreams, but also to the development
and growth of their families and communities (Early and GlenMaye, 2004; C.A. Rapp
and Goscha, 2006; Saleebey, 1996, 2006, 2009; Weick et al., 1989). Indeed, the
interplay between being and becoming and between what a person is in totality and
what may develop into greater fullness mark the essential dynamic of growth (Weick
et al., 1989, p. 352), which characterizes the helping process from a strengths perspective.


Papers in Strength Based Practice

The quality of the helping relationship is essential for the strengths perspective. This
empathetic, empowering relationship, characterized by the collaboration and
partnership between two human beings, transforms the realities of both participants
in the process. One discovers, uses, and transforms her or his strengths in pursuit of
her or his vision, dreams, and hopes, and, thus, becomes increasingly empowered to
make his or her own choices, to lead his or her life, and to contribute. The other
person is also transformed; her and his attitudes and expectations change regarding
the person who is guiding the process, the person who facilitates the discovery of
resources, the relationship between them, and the relationship with oneself. This
process takes courage, commitment, and generosity. A strengths based practitioner is
required to change his or her heart and mind. It is a personal paradigm shift
(Saleebey, 1997, p. 13).
While the Strengths Perspective has reached most, if not all, areas of social work practice,
an emphasis on deficit, disease, and dysfunction still persists in the field (Cowger,
1994; C.A. Rapp et al., 2005). However, As Blundo (2001) asserts, what is most
problematic with the inclusion of strengths talk in social work conversations is that
the insertion of strengths and empowerment language into a traditional frame gives a
false sense of understanding to those learning and engaging in practice. (p. 301). Many
social workers may not be ready to shift from a traditional social work practice to a
strengths framework because it challenges our cultural and professional traditions; it
questions our truths and hidden meanings (Blundo, 2006). In fact,
to learn the strengths perspective one must seriously challenge the basic
foundations of practice knowledge, the 80 years of variations on a basic theme
of disease and expertise as it is taught and practiced today. Anything less is a
distortion of the meanings employed in a practice from a strengths/
empowerment perspective (Blundo, 2001, p. 301).
How can we expect to find the assets, the strengths, the protective factors among the
damage if we only see the damage? We, as social workers, need to look beyond the
clients damage and wounds. Sometimes we feel more competent or empowered
when seeing the damage since we were trained to find it. To see beyond the damage it
is necessary to fight against ourselves, our biases, our training, and even our own
culture. We need to have positive expectations for our clients and truly believe in them.
A related question is: How can we find strengths in our clients if we cannot find
strengths within ourselves? Affirming our inner strengths is challenging, because it
requires personal exploration, which many social workers are not willing to do.
Because many social workers have been trained in the damage model, this negative
perspective is applied to themselves and is much too painful to bear. However, the main
tool of a social worker is his or herself (verbal and non verbal communication,
intuition, capacity for relationship, attitudes, life experience, and self-concept, among

What are Strengths based Practices all About?


others). Without self-exploration, the most important tool of the social worker (self) may
be misused and is potentially destructive. Moreover, the belief in a clients strengths
and positive expectations cannot be faked. So, it is crucial to truly believe in a client
and his or her potential. This can only be achieved by shifting our internal perspective
and becoming aware of our own strengths and resilience. Any helper must develop a
deep self-awareness to effectively promote this change.
How can we help someone discover hope in the future if we do not have hope in our
own lives? The importance of hope in resilience promotion and recovery has been
previously discussed. We need to discover our own hope and positive expectations for
our own lives. Again, it is a challenging process of self-recovery, which involves a positive
attitude towards ones life in general. Considering that hope is also related to spirituality,
it is necessary to reexamine our belief system, the meaning of our lives, and our sense as
a whole person in connection to humankind. It is not a daunting task, but it is definitely
How can we provide opportunities for creating turning point effects if we do not believe
in change? There is no possibility for creating any opportunity without a fundamental
belief in change, first. A human being always has the possibility of change. Despite
damaging experiences, what we learned about resilience shows that human beings
have the capacity to construct new narratives for their lives. Benard (2004) insists in
the importance of changing the life trajectories of children from risk to resilience,
beginning with changing the beliefs of the adults in their environment.
How can we expect ordinary magic to happen if we do not believe in it? We must believe
in the magic of resilience and we have to believe that the capacity for resilience is
ordinary and universal. With these beliefs in place, it becomes obvious that everybody
has the ability to bounce back from adversity; we can truly have positive expectations.
If we believe these things, in the helping encounter, magic is likely to happen. Social
workers are like alchemists because they have the possibility of changing lead into
gold, by discovering the clients strengths and resilience and encouraging this magical
transformation by the power of the word and a deep relationship.
Social workers interested in the strengths perspective need to engage in a personal
process of analysis and transformation, recognizing that this will be a continuous
process, recognizing signs of the traditional framework in their practice, becoming
aware of themselves and their attitudes, biases, and limitations, and defining a new
position for themselves in the helping relationship; that is, removing their expert hats
and acknowledging the clients expertise, knowledge, and capabilities. When we have
emptied our cups, we can have them ready to receive what the client brings, in an
open, curious, encouraging, empathetic, and empowering way. As Blundo (2001)


Papers in Strength Based Practice

Challenging this cultural and linguistic tradition, as well as a process that

has become synonymous with the social work profession, is a serious task that
needs to be undertaken if social work is to embrace a belief in human resilience
and strengths (p. 304).
Strengths based practices challenge us, our professional traditions, our cultural
influences, our beliefs and biases. As the client gains power and growth, the social worker
grows as well. This process takes us away from our comfort zone, our habits, and
hidden meanings in a process of discovery of our own strengths, resources, capabilities;
our own resilience; our own hopes and capacity for transformation. In other words,
without the expert hats, we are only, and truly, human beings, who care and believe
in the human being sitting across the room, and thus, a partnership, emerges more
easily and empowers our partner in this endeavor.
This paper had referred to Gandhian approaches to self reliance and inner strengths
development in the beginning. It is appropriate that I end this paper with another
Gandhi quote Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are
in harmony. This quote illustrates the kind of paradigm shift that strengths based
practitioners are required. Without our own labels, we, social workers, engage in the
collaboration with another human being by using our own strengths, capabilities,
skills, and internal and external resources; we tap into our own resilience with the ups
and downs of work and life; we discover and gain our own power within the
environments and transactions in which we participate; we come to work in pursuit
of our own dreams, hopes, and aspirations; we use our own inspiration to keep moving
forward, to set a vision and when our thoughts, words, and practice are in harmony;
we also inspire others. Strengths based practices assists us to build hope, in fact active
hope in our society.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Gandhi

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