DO NO HARM

Reflection Paper: The Narrative Metaphor, Externalising Conversations

 

   When reading about externalising conversations, I experienced a profound shift in the way I look at problems. As a social worker, I had been trained to somewhat diagnose client’s problems and hypothesising the various ways that these problems could have possibly manifested. A common habit when adopting this way of looking at things is the tendency to look at the problem as inherent in the client, either in individual character traits, or in patterns within the family system. It is a great irony to me, when as helping professionals, we work towards reducing the impact of the problem on our clients, but we insinuate that the problem and the person are one of the same, an action that may further increase the influence of the problem with our clients. We do this through the language we use with our clients, and the beliefs we have about their relationship with these problems.

 

A Strengths Based Model of Practice

Dennis Saleebey (2006) talks about how  the strength based approach is more of a perspective when working with clients, as opposed to being specific model of working with clients. A perspective he argues, is a position we take when looking or trying to understand any experienced phenomena. In the latest edition of his book, he identifies 5 main principles that guide the standpoint of the strengths perspective: 

1. Every individual, group, family, and community has strengths
2. Difficult and traumatic experiences can cause injury and pain, but they may create new opportunities and challenges
3. Work from the assumption that we can never know the full capacity of the ability to grow and change, and take the aspirations of individuals, groups and communities seriously
4. We should collaborate with clients towards helping them achieve their goals 
5. Every environment has resources that can be tapped upon
6. Understand the context of behaviours and situations to draw strengths; and caring takes precedence over technique when working with people.