Theoretical Orientation for Social Work Practice

Introduction

While critical elements of the curricula of accredited graduate social work programs are standardized by Council on Social Work Education curriculum policy standards, social work programs across the nation vary greatly in their selected theoretical approach to social work practice. Even though there is no one grand theory which effectively encompasses every aspect of social work, it is important and useful for social work programs to develop unifying theoretical frameworks to coherently draw together disparate theories and to provide a basis for their differential application in practice. In the educational process a program's theoretical approach serves as the scaffold upon which social work knowledge, values, and skills are systematized into an array of discrete abstractions called concepts. Diversity in theoretical approaches among social work programs, flows out of the mission of the college or university as it relates to the constituency served and the social context towards which its educational efforts are focused.

Roberts Wesleyan College’s mission as a Christian institution of higher learning includes integrating service, academic excellence, and professionalism so that graduates are prepared to provide leadership in the world, by helping to make society, organizations and institutions more humane and effective. As a further distillation of the College's mission, the MSW Program has a particular concern for groups who are oppressed and economically disadvantaged.
The Program faculty believe that social work practice in this context is best supported by an ecological framework. Within the ecological framework, understanding the symbiosis between persons and their environments is essential for holistic comprehension of human development, interpersonal transactions, and the reciprocity between persons and social structures. To this widely used framework, the Roberts Program adds the spiritual perspective which in part means that human existence involves a search for meaning. Together they are referred to as the Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems perspective.

In addition, the Roberts MSW Program has selected a practice framework which provides a critical conceptual bridge for application of ecological principles to social work situations. The selected unifying practice framework is called the Strengths Oriented Life Model which combines the Life Model and the Strengths Perspective. Together, this practice framework provides an effective theoretical approach to social work practice which meshes well with the College and the MSW Program's commitment to both help people adjust to the environment as well as they can and to build a more humane society. The locus of activity for the Strengths Oriented Life Model is focused on client reactance, adaptation and strengths, and empowerment as a means for mitigation of disequilibrium between persons and their environments. The Strengths Oriented Life Model entails a concomitant focus on quality of life issues of client systems as it relates to interpersonal interaction, status of resource systems, and functionality of social structures.
Following is a brief explanation of the key concepts included in Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems and Strengths Oriented Life Model.

Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems

Four major complexes of concepts undergird the Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems perspective. The first three are based on ecological systems work of Germain and Gitterman (e.g. 1986). The fourth concept, spiritually, is a recently popularized concept with significant contribution of persons such as Canada (e.g. 1988), Joseph (e.g. 1987), and Keith-Lucas (e.g. 1985).

The first complex is "Adaptation-Stress-Coping." According to this complex, all of life is nurtured and supported by the environment in which it exists. Thus, the quality of physical and social life is essentially and necessarily linked to the environment. The circumstances of life are both expected and unexpected, predictable and unpredictable. Because of this natural dialectic, human beings rarely, if ever, are able to maintain an optimal fit with the environment. Thus, the focus in understanding and helping client systems is on goodness of fit related to coping, and adaptation in which stress is the impetus to creatively finding a comfort zone within the environment.

The second complex of ideas, "Human Relatedness, Identity/Self-Esteem, and Competence," focuses on the biological and social inner-relatedness of human beings. Self perceiving and the level of comfort or discomfort with one’s self perception as well as one’s acquired level of skills for interaction as a self-perceiving person with other persons cannot be constructed apart from biological and social interaction with other human beings. Therefore, within the ecological perspective, innerpersonal crisis related to personality, identity, and social competence must be understood within its social dimensions and the human relational factors which shape such crises. Social change efforts related to this area can only be further elaborations of the given of human relatedness.

The third idea complex is that of "The Environment: Layers and Textures." Human beings exist within the environment in a varying array of relationships characterized by roles which take place within as families, social networks, organizations, or institutions. These sets of relationships involve persons in different combinations and at different levels related to social choices, life cycle development, and degrees of freedom and/or circumscription of freedom within society. The placement of persons within these social structures is further shaped by culture and social forces and the nature and distribution of power. The idea of layers and textures in the environment highlights the systemic nature of society, and its social structures which interact with and shape the quality of human life in a manner that is pervasive, but often unconscious.

Spirituality is identified as a compelling synergistic dimension of life which provides an essential dimension to the ecological perspective. A significant aspect of human existence, according to the spiritual perspective, is the search for meaning. Human beings want not only to know what, but why. It is the spiritual dimension that unifies and gives purpose to human encounters within the layers and textures of the environment and social interactions with other humans. Frequently, spirituality can be found in religious observance and worldviews that involve structure and organization. These beliefs and structures may have been present for decades, centuries, and even millennia. For some persons, however, spirituality is individual and private, but equally important in guiding behavior.
The Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems perspective is based upon the assumption that meaning is necessarily and essentially related to the goodness fit with one's environment. It assures that assessment and intervention begins at the basic level of client system’s beliefs, values, and perceptions, and their own personal agendas in attempting to find meaning in their lives.

Strengths Oriented Life Model

The central theoretical construct of Strengths Oriented Life Model is developed by Germain and Gitterman in The Life Model of Social Work Practice, (1996). Added to the ideas of Germain and Gitterman is the work of Saleebey and others referred to as the Strengths Perspective (Saleebey, 1992). A summary of the key concepts found in the Life Model and the Strengths Perspective follows:

The Life Model

The Life Model approach to practice not only facilitates students’ understanding of the complexity of the person-in-the situation context, but provides a potent approach to social work practice within the ecological reality of social and physical life. It conceptualizes a constant reciprocity between persons and their environments. The Life Model is posited as a framework for understanding and helping people with these complex transactions:
Peoples’ needs and problems are viewed as outcomes of stressful person-environment relationships. Intervention is directed toward changing those relationships so that peoples’ potentialities for growth, health, and adaptive social functioning are released and environments are made more responsive to their needs, rights, goals and capacities (Turner, 1986, p. 628).
Based on the ecological nature of people's problems and needs, the Life Model divides social work practice activity into three broad categories: life transitions; environmental stressors; and maladaptive interpersonal processes.

Life Transitions include:

Developmental changes across the life span, changes in status that present new or conflicting role demands, and crisis events -- all with reciprocal tasks for the individual, family, group or community, and the environment (Turner 1986, p. 628).
Social work practice related to life transitions focuses on services which promote growth, health, and adaptive functioning and prevention of breakdown. Methods and skills required of the social worker dealing with issues of life transitions are: enabling, exploring, mobilizing, guiding, and facilitating (Germain and Gitterman, 1996, p. 112).

Environmental stressors focus on interferences with access and use of resource systems, and the functioning of organizational and network structures in a manner that makes them unresponsive and/or unavailable to persons. Social work practice roles relevant to this area involve facilitating a better goodness of fit by mitigating or eliminating environmental pressures and interferences. Social work methods and skills crucial to accomplishing these are coordinating, mediating, advocacy, innovating, and influencing, as well as enabling, exploring, mobilizing, guiding, and facilitating (Germain and Gitterman, 1996, p. 52.).

Maladaptive Interpersonal processes have to do with dysfunctional patterns of communication and relationship as persons interact with one another in goal driven behavior related to life transitions and environmental issues. Social work practice here attempts to identify common ground between persons, enhance self awareness, facilitate communication, and work to remove interpersonal obstacles. Appropriate social work methods and skills for this area are: internal mediating and internal advocating (Germain and Gitterman, 1996, p. 52).

The Strengths Perspective

The Strengths Perspective is viewed as a perspective that self-consciously shifts practitioners towards positive application of the Life Model. Because social work practice is itself a social structure within the very environment in which it seeks to bring about social change, it too is affected by positive and negative forces which simultaneously enhance and compromise quality of life for persons. Thus there is needed a self-consciousness which intentionally and proactively elaborates and focuses social work practice on client creativity and empowerment.
The Strengths Perspective includes six key concepts. They are Empowerment, Membership, Regeneration and Healing from Within, Synergy, Dialogue and Collaboration, and Suspension of Disbelief.

Empowerment is the commitment to mobilizing power that is within individuals, groups, and communities for reducing circumscription of freedoms and abrogation of status as fully participating citizens of society. Empowerment along with other strengths of individuals are viewed as a renewable and expandable resource.

Membership has to do with the issue of the "person located in place." Here the concern is for communal place and identity of persons, along with the requisite entitlements to dignity, respect, and responsibility. Membership conveys a proactive concern to obviate marginalization of persons and groups because of flaws in the symbiosis between them and their environments.

Regeneration and Healing from Within are emphases that stand in sharp contradistinction to disease and pathology. Regeneration and healing, though presupposing conditions of illness and disease, are focused on the overcoming potential of persons for moving into states of wellness, health, and wholeness. Linking the helping process to regeneration and healing constrains perspectives which view mental and physical illness as primarily static states. When illness is accepted as the definitive state, the range of available interventions is viewed as narrow. On the other hand regeneration and healing have to do with the natural human phenomenon of creating and recreating. Consequently, the range of possible interventions is closely linked to physical, mental, social and spiritual creativity.

Synergy has to do with the maximizing potential of groups over individuals to effectively create resources, which are viewed as expandable and renewable, instead of scarce. The premise upon which synergy is based is that human beings can act collectively in extraordinary ways in response to circumstances and situations. The product of collective adaptation will be more complex than that of individual actors. Synergy focuses on the expanded potential for the collective to shape institutionalized response to need from a basis of plenty rather than scarcity.

Dialogue and Collaboration is reaffirmation of the importance of social interaction in the shaping of the self. Dialogue has to do with the recognition of the essential role that others serve in helping us to grow and develop. Human relatedness, a necessary component of dialogue, brings about empathy, identification, and inclusion. Dialogue makes possible weakening and/or elimination of class, race, gender, culture, and creedal boundaries. Dialogue is a critical requirement for building a more humane society. Collaboration refers to the application of the concept of dialogue which takes place in a social work practice relationship characterized by mutuality.

Suspension of Disbelief encourages the social worker to approach clients with an attitude of trust rather than doubt. Rooted deeply in the helping tradition of the United States are the politics of suspicion. These serve to discourage persons from using established formal helping networks. As such they inhibit the possibility of social welfare serving as an activity for strengthening community, but instead foster one that marginalizes, stigmatizes, and diminishes personhood. Rather than accept socially imposed standards which generically define all expected conditions of need, suspension of disbelief emphasizes client perceptions of need and potentialities. As a much more elastic categorization of need, suspension of disbelief offers the possibility for eliminating gaps in services.

References

Canada, E. (1988). Conceptualizing spirituality for social work: Insights from diverse perspectives. Social Casework (14)1, 30-46.

Germain, C. B., & Gitterman. (1986). The life model approach to social work practice revisited. In Frances Turner (Ed.), Social work treatment: Interlocking theoretical approaches (pp. 618-644). New York: Free Press.

Joseph, M.V. (1987). The religious and spiritual aspects of clinical practice: A neglected dimension of social work. Social Thought 13(1), 12-23.
Keith-Lucas, A. (1985). Integrating faith and practice. Social Work and Christianity 12(1) 4-12.

Saleebey, D. ( 1992). The strengths perspective in social work practice. New York: Longman.

Turner, F. (1974). Social work treatment: Interlocking theoretical approaches. New York: Free Press.