Why we are all talking about strength based practice?

By Fran Leddra, Principal Social Worker and Strategic Lead, Safeguarding and Adult Social Care, Adults, Housing and Health, Thurrock Council - and Chief Social Worker England. 

Fran joins SCIE at NCASC on Friday 22 November - 9.30 - 10.30 in FW26 for a session on strengths-based approaches

It’s interesting how strength based practice is seen as the new ‘buzz’ topic in adult social care, everyone is talking about it, our plans are changing to accommodate it and we are embracing a new language to accompany it.  But of course it’s not new, and people have been writing about it for many years ; Weick (1989) and Saleebey,(1992) articulating what we are trying to achieve today in our practice along with many others.

The difference now is that social work is getting back to its roots of good human relationship focused practice where we empower the person and disempower the problem.  This has always been at the heart of our profession but somehow we lost our way with systems and processes that restricted our creativity, reduced our skills to tick box assessments  and focused on all that was wrong so we could help ‘fix’ the problems.  The difficulty with trying to ‘fix’ is that it assumes we know best, that we can solve the issue and that the individual is a passive recipient.  

When we move away from problem-solving to listening, understanding, walking alongside people and focusing on what is strong and what a good life looks like, we have a totally different conversation.  We have also listened and learned from experts by experience and have been influenced by Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).  This is helping us introduce innovative new community based support and a different offer to traditional services.  We may still have a way to go, but it really does feel we are moving in the right direction. 

I’m inspired by the many stories I have heard in how the resurgence of strength and human relationship based practice is really making a difference to people’s lives, not just in the short term, but building resilience for the longer term.  Social work is leading this transformation, resulting in a recognition of the important space we fill across health and wellbeing partnerships.   Lets keep the buzz going! 

Fran tweets @franlc>>>

NCASC 2019>>>