Empowerment is a mind-set that focuses on strengths rather than deficits

If you are reading article, this then you have online access to a PC or mobile device most likely. You may have a job or a career either employed, voluntary, a home maker or a student. You may have been, or are currently unemployed. In all of these scenarios, dealing with real world problems is affected by how you approach a problem or a hurdle. It’s difficult enough if you start out from a defeatist point of view, lacking in self-belief and speaking over yourself that you cannot do something. Then you set yourself up to fail. The age old cliché speaks of people who see the glass half empty and others who see the glass half full: the pessimist and the optimist. This is not necessarily the most helpful analogy because in reality it does not matter how much is in the glass as long as you recognise that there is something.

A deficit or pathological approach to the disadvantaged

With no intention to apply guilt, lets look at the same real-world problems for those below the traditional lines of real world problems. Let’s look at the homeless. When seeking to help the homeless, the vast majority of agencies employ approaches to assess need, focus on the deficits of the individual and employ what has been sometimes termed a ‘pathological approach’. They are seeking to analyse what is wrong with a person, what has led them to be in the situation they are in and act the way they do in order to work out how to fix it. This brings the focus onto past failures and sets the individual up with a negative expectation and outlook on life. It can lead them to question their own capabilities and lose confidence. We need to remember that to understand how to help a disadvantaged person (particularly a homeless person) agencies will attempt to get a history. How risky this can be. For in the very process of assessing need, agencies take the person back to the failures. Back to the pain. Back to the wrongdoing. Back to the beginning.

In his article of entitled ‘Discipline and Punish’, Foucault (1979) proposes that “the judges of normality are everywhere……we are a society of the teacher-judge, doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge…..we are entering the age of infinite examination and of compulsory objectification……..the age of infinite examination” (p 304).

Whilst agencies need something to base provision on, the pathological approach does nothing to lift the person mentally out of the negative state. Their reality is negative. They are homeless! One of mankind’s basic needs, after food and water.  The pathological approach stifles any hope for change and it puts people in a box that ends up defining them. In short you can so easily end up with the individual believing that this is who they are, its who they were meant to be, and things will always be like this.

This is the kind of approach so often used by the UK probation service and those working in youth justice or in alcohol and drug services where the focus is on how to stop the individual from doing what they should not be doing. This behaviour that has to be corrected at all costs becomes what defines the person and part of their identity often to the point where without it they have no clue who they are. Going back to the glass analogy; a homeless person isn’t even aware they have a glass in the first place. Who decided that they have a glass? Society? And then to confound matters we add a label to go with this thinking such as ex-offender, drug-user, addict or such like which supports the core belief that this part of who the person is. A homeless person is in a circumstance called homelessness. This is not who they are. They may have associated dependencies such as drugs and alcohol but again this isn’t who they are. How do we as a society and as a nation of tax payers get to grips with the idea that homelessness, is the reality of being vulnerable and disadvantaged?

The strength based approach

On the contrary the strength based approach starts by considering the strengths and qualities that an individual has that can be built upon. Kathleen Cox, an American clinical social worker defined such an approach in her book on the subject in 2006 as founded on the premise that even the most troubled youth have unique talents, skills, and other resources that can be marshalled in the service of recovery and development. It is fundamental that such an approach is used from the outset to start shifting the thinking in the mind of the individual away from the negative and their deficits to considering their strengths and assets.

This has always been the approach that we have adopted as a homeless charity. Part of the assessment process we use for determining the suitability of an applicant to our services is called the “Strengths and Needs Assessment”. We ask some of the following questions as part of the process:

·        What are your interests and what do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

·        What are your strengths and skills?

·        What did you enjoy doing at school? And what were you good at?

·        How can we help you to build upon these things?

·        Where do you see yourself in 2 years’ time?

·        What does success look like to you?

The aim of these questions is to get the individual thinking about the positives in their life, the things they enjoy and are good at so that we have a starting point that we can work from and build on. We want the individual to realise not just that they have assets but that they themselves can and are an asset to the community and to society.

At this point we are not looking at the glass analogy. We are not applying anything other than a simple process.

Handling the objections

Those who advocate against using such a model, try and suggest that it ignores the problems and issues and that just because you ignore something does not mean that it goes away. Or they see it as diminishing both responsibility and accountability. This is however not the case. The point is not to ignore the challenges, the risks or the problems that an individual is facing. The document we referred to above is the “Strengths and Needs Assessment”. As part of the process we acknowledge that the individual has needs, has faced problems in the past and that there will be risk factors that will need to be mitigated. We do not however make these things the primary focus. Our goal is to change the mind-set of the individual away from who they have come to believe they are and onto who and what they could look to become. If they express a desire to become an Astronaut then we will affirm them and support them in that and seek to empower them to work towards their dream. This might mean simply looking at how they could start by getting some GCSEs. The chances are that they are not going to end up being an Astronaut and their desires and aims will change over time. In the meantime, we encourage them to believe in themselves, to work hard towards their goal and to reach for the stars.

The reality for many of the people we serve in our home creating charity is a holistic, person centred approach to provide relational warmth, friendship and hope, alongside the existing risk assessed needs to support that person. Until UK social services, statutory bodies and mental health services start to embed relationship building, the fostering of friendship, providing a home (rather than accommodation), structured help to find gainful employment (emphasis of gainful) as part of the needs of a homeless person then I’m afraid that Foucault’s proposition that we are “the judges of normality ………. a society of the teacher-judge, doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge…..” will prevail.

 Matthieu Lambert - CEO Hope into Action: Black Country