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• It presents human rights framework as a springboard in understanding strength-based approach and its underlying concepts and principles in the context of counselling and social work practice
• It also provides enlightenment on the role of social work counselling in increasing human resiliency in combatting the challenges brought about by unexpected devastating situations and crises
• Human Rights-Based Approach


  Ensuring that both the standards and the principles of human rights are integrated into plans, policies, services and processes of humanitarian intervention and development
• Underlying principles of a human rights-based practice

  • Participation
  • Accountability
  • Non-discrimination and equality
  • Empowerment
  • Legality of rights
• Strength-Based Approach


  A social work practice theory based on the key concepts of resilience, empowerment, hope, construction of meaning and partnership
• Standards to determine if an approach is strengths-based

  • Goal orientation
  • Strengths assessment
  • Resources from the environment
  • Hope inducing relationship
  • Meaningful choice
• Miracle Question


  Now, I want to ask you a strange question. Suppose that while you are sleeping tonight and the entire house is quiet, a miracle happens. The miracle is that the problem which brought you here is solved. However, because you are sleeping, you don't know that the miracle has happened. So, when you wake up tomorrow morning, what will be different that will tell you that a miracle has happened and the problem which brought you here is solved?
• Presupposing change questions


  1. What stopped complete disaster from occurring?

  2. How did you avoid falling apart?

  3. What kept you from unraveling?

  4. What's different or better since I saw you last time?
• Exception Questions


  1. Tell me about times when you don't get angry

  2. Tell me about times you felt the happiest

  3. When was the last time that you feel you had a better day?

  4. Was there ever a time when you felt happy in your relationship?

  5. What was it about that day that made it a better day?

  6. Can you think of a time when the problem was not present in your life?

  7. If your husband / wife / partner were here and I were to ask him the same question, what do you think he/she would say?

  8. What do you suppose you did to make that happen?

  9. What is the most important thing for you to remember to do to make sure that _________________(the exception) has the best chance of happening again? What's the next most important thing to remember?

  10. What do you think your husband / wife/ partner would say the chances are that this (the exception) will happen again? What would he say you could do to increase the chances of that happening again? Suppose you decide to do that; what do you think he would do

  11. Suppose he/she did that; how would things be different for you…around your house…in your relationship with him/her?
• Solution Focused Therapy (SFT) is a goal-oriented therapy that encourages clients to develop a vision of what they want to achieve, presupposing that clients have the knowledge and ability to solve their own problems
• Solution Focused Therapy


  • Focuses on the desired change in life rather than the problems
  • The desired change is defined in positive, specific, and behavioral language
  • The counselor/therapist guides the client to envision a future where things are working well despite the problem
• Solution Focused Therapy Techniques

  1. Goal clarification

  2. The Miracle Question Technique

  3. Experiment invitation

  4. Problem-free talk

  5. Do one thing different

  6. Breaks

  7. Compliments

  8. Choosing language carefully
• The Miracle Question Technique


  Envisioning a miracle happening and life being different in an important way for the client
• Do one thing different

  Technique involving 8 steps to help clients recognize their strengths and resources, identify ways to overcome the problem, set goals, and practice useful skills
• Strengths-Based Case Management combines a focus on the individual's strengths with promoting the use of informal supportive networks, offering assertive community involvement by case managers, and emphasizing the relationship between the client and case manager
• Narrative Therapy


  • Founded on the principle that people live their lives by stories or narratives they have created through their experiences
  • Counselors help clients externalize the problem, separating it from the person to allow them to deal with it constructively
• Family Support Services


  • Aim to empower and connect the family as a unit to have the same end goal of being together
  • Respond in a supportive manner to families where children's welfare is under threat
  • Reduce risk to children by enhancing family life and developing existing strengths of parents
• Community Resiliency Model (CRM)

  • Holds that there is a biological reaction common to most of humanity after traumatic experiences
  • Aims to educate people about common reactions to stress and trauma, reduce these reactions, shift perceptions to see stress reactions as biological rather than mental weakness, and encourage integrating wellness skills into daily life
• Depression, somatic symptoms and hostility indicators

  Conditions that the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) aims to address
• Community Resiliency Model (CRM)


  A skills-based approach developed by the Trauma Resource Institute to help create "trauma-informed" and "resiliency-focused" communities
• Goals of CRM


  1. To educate people about common reactions to trauma and stress

  2. To reduce common human reactions related to stressful or traumatic experiences

  3. To shift perceptions so that stress reactions are seen as biological rather than mental weakness

  4. To encourage individuals to integrate wellness skills into their daily life
• 6 Key Skills of the Community Resiliency Model

  • Tracking
  • Grounding
  • Resources
  • Gesturing
  • Shift and Stay
• Crisis


  A perception or experiencing of an event or situation as an intolerable difficulty that exceeds the person's current resources and coping mechanisms
• Crisis intervention


  A brief, active therapy with the goal of returning the individual to a pre-crisis level of functioning
• Crisis counselling


  To help an individual to restore some sense of control and mastery after a crisis event or disaster
• Typical responses of those experiencing crisis

  • Cognitive responses
  • Physical responses
  • Emotional responses
  • Behavioral responses
• Types of crisis


  • Developmental
  • Situational
  • Existential
  • Systemic
• Goals of crisis counseling

  • To ensure safety and promote overall stability
  • To provide emotional support for the individual
  • To solve problem and assists individuals in obtaining available resources
  • To restore equilibrium to their biopsychosocial functioning and to minimize the potential for long-term psychological trauma
• The counselor's role in crisis counseling

  • Listen to concerns
  • Assess safety needs
  • Protect rights and responsibilities of client
  • Build therapeutic relationship
  • Setting objectives
  • Speak clearly, in the present, about the problem
  • Take immediate, direct action to restore mobility and equilibrium
• Elements of crisis counseling

  • Assessing the situation
  • Education
  • Offering support
  • Developing coping skills
• Strengths-based approach


  An approach that when done right opens up many possibilities, can be used in any intervention in any setting with any client group including carers and by any social or health care member of staff
• The Care Act puts a strengths-based approach at the centre of any intervention, placing the individual and not only their problems, at the centre of the process and highlighting 'What is strong' rather than 'What is wrong'
• Strengths-based approach


  Identifying the resources someone has within themselves as well as who and what support they have around them, ensuring that all their strengths and talents are identified and considered in all interventions, not just their needs and personal outcomes
• The core duty of the Care Act is to promote individual wellbeing, which is broader than meeting eligible needs
• Interventions with a strengths-based approach


  • Holistic, person-centred, outcomes-focused
• As individuals we have multiple skills, knowledge, talents, character traits, relationships and abilities, and social care interventions should consider all of those rather than a one-size-fits-all based on the catch-all labels such as disability, dementia or simply 'old'
• Through a strengths-based approach we support the individual to identify their personal outcomes, their needs and their strengths, including social and family networks; and other universal resources available to them
• Strengths-based approach


  1. Identify individual's strengths, needs and personal outcomes

  2. Identify how strengths, individual and community resources can support them to improve their lives

  3. Work collaboratively with the individual
• It is generally not easy to identify one's strengths - and adults and carers can find it difficult, but there are useful tools like asking the right questions, strengths mapping, motivational interviewing, recovery model, Three Houses that can support practitioners and individuals in identifying strengths
• Sometimes individuals need support to get involved in the process, and we must look at how we can do this by changing times for meetings, locations, bridging gaps in communication needs, providing an independent advocate, and so on