The strengths perspective in social work: lessons from practice

The paper provides an overview of the strengths perspective in social work which offers a critical, radical approach to practice in the sense that, among other things, it questions (i) the dominant deficits-based mental health paradigm, which pigeonholes people in terms of pathology and assigns them disempowering labels; (ii) anti-oppressive practice models that construe clients as oppressed and immediately engender feelings of powerlessness; and (iii) rigid mindsets such as positivism, ardent feminism and structuralism that lead practitioners to approach the helping situation with preconceived ideas that influence the way they listen to, hear and interpret the client’s story and thus the way they design their interventions. It reviews the domains in which strength-based approaches have taken hold from individual counselling, such as solution-focused brief therapy, to community interventions, such as assets-based community development, and narrative approaches which span both the individual and community, to policy where proactive policies, such as family preservation policies, reflect their influence. It then examines its relevance drawing on lessons from practice.