Strengths Based Working: too great a challenge for Social Work?

By the Department of Social Work and Social Care & the West Midlands Applied Research Collaboration 

Social work has aspired to demonstrate a strengths based approach in its practice since the publication in the early 1990’s of the seminal text by Dennis Saleebey at the University of Kansas. Strengths based principles are widely accepted within the profession and reflected in contemporary social work models, good practice guidance, and parts of recent legislation. There are though tensions between a strengths-based approach and people’s experiences of interacting with an under-resourced and over-stretched social care system. 

In this seminar Alex Fox (A new health and care system: escaping the invisible asylum, Policy Press) will reflect on the possibilities and limitations of strengths based working demonstrated by social workers supporting adults, children and families in the age of austerity. Alex is the Chief Executive of one of the most innovative provider networks in the UK, Shared Lives Plus, a Trustee of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and a Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. 

Alex will joined by Shared Lives Ambassadors Heather Thompson and Tom Milnes who will share their lived experience of social work practice. 

Andrew Errington, Principal Social Worker for Adults from Coventry will provide a professional response.