Social Dimensions of Human Behavior

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Social Dimensions of Human Behavior

• Empowerment Theory

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Overview

• Social Worker/Client are co-investigators of the
  realities associated with oppressed groups
• Dual Focus
• Client Potential
• Political/Structural Change
• Utilizes both clinical and social change theory
• False dichotomy of social work clinical versus
  social action

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Empowerment Concepts

• There is a connection between social and economic
  justice and individual function
• Incorporates and ecological framework in
  examining transactions between individual and the
  environment (Achievement of Homeostasis)
• However, it doesnt ignore the need for systemic
  challenge and conflict as a means of forcing
  environments to serve individual function
• Goodness of Fit Concept

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Key Perspectives of Empowerment Theory

• Historical Perspective
• Learning a groups history of oppression,
  including a historical-critical analysis related
  to social policy
• An Ecological Perspective
• Stress-Coping Paradigm (a transactional view of
  ego function that takes oppression into account,
  problem solving, cognitive restructuring of false
  beliefs and internalized oppression
• Incorporation of Ethclass/Feminist perspectives
• Ceilings and floors imposed by race, class, and
  gender from personal and political perspective

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Historical Perspective of Empowerment

• Jane Addams-Settlement House Movement
• African American Womens Clubs
• Bertha Reynolds Psychiatric Caseworker
• Integrated psychoanalysis with democratic
  socialist ideals
• Barbara Solomon (1979)
• First major thinker to incorporate direct and
  indirect block of power concept
• Indirect Negative valuations of the oppressor
• Direct Institutional instigation of
  powerlessness

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Process of Empowerment

• The development of a more positive and potent
  sense of self (clinical)
• Construction of knowledge and capacity for more
  critical comprehension of social and political
  realities of ones environment (clinical, group
  work, psychoeducational)
• Cultivation of resources and strategies (group
  work, mutual aid, coalition building, social
  action)

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Summary of Framework 1

• Purpose
• To assist people, who experience poverty and
  oppression in their efforts to empower themselves
  to enhance adaptive potential and to work hard at
  changing environmental and structural
  arrangements that are oppressive
• Values
• Preference for working with oppressed populations
• Strengthen individual adaptation/ Create
  structural change
• Creation of a just society

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Summary of Framework 2

• Knowledge and Theoretical Foundations
• Person-in-environment
• History of oppression, ethclass, feminism,
• Individual Adaptive Potential
• Ego Functions, social and cognitive behavioral
  learning, problem-solving skills, empowerment
  through individual, family, and group work
  helping processes, empowerment of achieving
  structural change

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Summary of Framework 3

• Methods Skills
• One-to-One Helping Relationship
• Group Work
• Community/Social Action
• Collaboration of all three

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The Social Worker in the Empowerment Process 1

• Training and Background
• Clinical and political expertise is required to
  perform adequately
• Advanced Generalist Social Work Perspective works
  best in this model
• Background in individual, family, and group work
• Awareness of cultural and structural oppression
  and impacted groups

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The Social Worker in the Empowerment Process 2

• Role of the Social Worker in Empowerment Theory
• Equitable relationship with the client
  problem-solving partners
• Experiences him or herself as a member of an
  oppressed group as well as an oppressive group
• Self-Disclosure is okay in this model
• The helper is also the receiver of help
• Assessment
• Goal Understand the clients experience of
  oppression and the impact on their ego function
  and adaptation
• Developing the client story or narrative (Who
  would you be if this hadnt happened)

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The Social Worker in the Empowerment Process 3

• Contracting
• Mutuality between the worker and the
  clientagreed upon interventions and methods
• Client may develop much of the planas this
  theory believes the client desires to grow toward
  empowerment
• Length of Intervention
• However long it takes to both solve the
  presenting concern of the client (raised
  consciousness) and to challenge the structural
  oppression
• See one, Be one, Teach one
• I did itnow I can empower others (group process
  mutual aid)

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Assessment Data

• Demographic Data
• Age, ethnicity, ethclass, relational status,
  work, living situation
• Life Transitions
• Developmental Status/Roles, Crisis Issues,
  Relevant Developmental History
• Health Mental Health
• Physical and mental challenges, psychiatric/
  substance abuse history, and ego functions (at
  least 10-13 functions)
• Interpersonal
• Be specific about family members and functions,
  significant relationships, social networks,
  patterns of communication and roles in groups,
  nature and quality of relationships
• Physical Socioeconomic Environment and impact
  on client

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Assessment Data 2

• Manifestations of Oppression
• Basic survival mechanisms, facing discrimination
  and direct blocks to resources and opportunities
  internalized oppression in power, rank, or value
  as a result of oppression
• Areas of Powerlessness/ Power Shortages
• What knowledge, skills, attitudes, consciousness,
  or resources does the client experience deficits?
• Strengths (Person Environment)
• Formulation
• Statement of assessmentwhat does all this data
  mean and how does it impact function or
  dysfunction
• Contracting Initial working agreement/steps of
  interventions

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Empowering Interventions

• Supportive listening/ reflective thinking on the
  clients perception of the presenting issue and
  empathy for their experience of oppression
• Developing a list of ego strengths and adaptive
  functions currently and successfully utilized
• Drawing attention to environmental transactions,
  oppressive functions of structure and environment
  and how they interact with client function
• Collaboration Mutual aid, sharing of self and
  experiences

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Empowering Interventions

• Meeting needs based on Hierarchy
• Maslow may come in handy heremaintenance of
  needs encourages empowerment.
• Success breeds Success
• Externalizing Oppression leads to Psychic
  Comfort/Self Esteem
• Reducing self-blame, hatred, and fosters a sense
  of identity separate from oppression.
• Restructuring of environment also reinforces this
  externalization of oppression
• Problem Solving Self Direction
• Think Differently, Act Differently, Feel
  Differently
• Teaching basic skills to confront oppression

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Empowering Interventions

• Skill Building
• Consciousness Raising
• Be creativeart therapy, poetry, music.
• Praxis Analyzing self-response to oppression
  (Cognitive restructuring)
• Critical Education (Viewing Oppression from a
  Different Light)
• Skill BuildingInsight Action Change

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Case Study

• Group 1 Domestic violence/ Womens Shelter
• Group 2 Severe Mental Illness
• Group 3 Gay or Lesbian Sexual Orientation
• Group 4 A woman desires to serve in the role a
  religious leadership, but is prohibited by her
  denomination

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Case Study

• Define the presenting problem
• Interpersonal or Structural Oppression
• Methods of Assessmentwhat assessment data is
  important
• Methods of intervention from an empowerment
  perspective
• Treatment on the Individual, Group, Family, and
  Community Level?