5 - Practice - Skills - in - Social - Work - and - Welfare - More - Th... - (Part - I - Learning - Practice - Skills Theory - and - Context)

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CRITICAL ANTI-OPPRESSIVE AND

STRENGTHS-BASED PRACTICE
Ronnie Egan and Angelika Papadopoulos
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
• To identify and make the conceptual links between critical

social work, anti-oppressive and strengths-based practice
• To introduce the strengths-based approaches of solution-
focused and narrative practice
• To identify strengths-based questioning skills of scaling,
coping, exception and externalising
The Integrated Framework introduced in Chapter 1 (see Figure 1.1),

has an anti-oppressive practice (AOP) approach to inform work with
individuals, families and groups. This chapter introduces the language
Copyright © 2016. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
of perspective, the theory and practice approach, and the links between
them, and looks at how their integration occurs in practice. We will
then locate an AOP approach within the broader perspective of critical
theory and critical social work through identifying key dimensions of
critical analysis for practice. The remainder of the chapter provides an
overview of strengths-based approaches and associated skills, which
will be used throughout the text.
As noted in Chapter 1, the gap between theory and practice in social
work has a number of characterisations, including the pedagogical dis-
tinction between learning in the classroom and learning on placement,
the abstractions of theory and the reality of practice, the difference
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Maidment, J., & Egan, R. (Eds.). (2016). Practice skills in social work and welfare : More than just common sense. Taylor & Francis Group.
Created from ballarat on 2023-09-14 11:08:22.
LEARNING PRACTICE SKILLS—THEORY AND CONTEXT
between field education academics and other social work academics,

and the possible alienation between the academy and the field. Despite
such binaries, students must engage with, and reconcile, these differ-
ences in practice (Baines 2007; Hosken 2010). It is often the language
of theory that leads students and practitioners to identify themselves as
‘not much into theory’. The following sections will define and illustrate
key terms that relate to the ways in which practitioners see the world,
how they understand their roles and responsibilities and how these
influence practice. We start by distinguishing between perspective,
theory and practice approaches, and discuss praxis as a way of bringing
together or enacting theory in the ways we work.
PERSPECTIVE/WORLD-VIEW
A perspective refers to ways of seeing the world, the order of things,
the mental frame that informs our learning and being. Another term
for perspective is ‘world-view’. Our world-views are not always clearly
articulated, and often relate to the things that we assume are ‘the way
the world is’. Perspectives inform our understandings of what it is to be
in the world, to be a human being in a particular time and place, and
our understandings of the nature of relationships and social change.
Theorists have attempted to explain differences in our understandings
of the ways we can be in the world by reference to world-views (some-
times also called paradigms). Perspectives are subject to historical and
social variation.
Depending on your world-view, you will think very differently in
response to fundamental questions about the nature of being human
and the capabilities of human beings. For example, if you have a
modernist perspective, you might be of the view that societies are
progressing, that science and technology can be deployed to solve the
major social problems of our time and that individuals have the power
to make differences in their lives. If, in contrast, you think of the world
as governed by forces beyond human control or influence, and see
the course of our lives as being in the hands of fate, you would hold
a pre-modernist/traditional world-view. Differences in perspective can
be seen in disconnections between service users and workers in terms
of what each group sees as a possible way out of difficult situations.
Depending on the perspective you bring to your practice, different
theories and practice approaches will seem either more or less relevant
or useful.
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Critical anti-oppressive and strengths-based practice
THEORY
Theories are different ways of understanding human beings, behaviours
and society. Theories are used to explain, predict or describe some-
thing. Explanatory theories answer the question ‘Why does this occur?’
Social work has been associated with numerous theoretical positions,
not all of which are compatible with an anti-oppressive commitment in
practice. In this text, we concentrate on critical theory as a foundation
for anti-oppressive practice (Dominelli 2008; Allan et al. 2009).
Critical theories have an explanatory emphasis, and emerge from
the perspective that social inequalities and conflicts over resources, rec-
ognition and rewards are built into our social structures (that is, those
institutions and practices embedded into our society). One aim of critical
theory is to identify and expose the ways in which these conflicts and con-
tradictions are woven into the historical and social development of the
contemporary environment (Bay 2009, 2014). Examples of contemporary
inequalities include differences between the social position and oppor-
tunities of those who are wealthy and those who are not, between men
and women, between those who have access to paid employment and
those who engage in other activities, and between people who belong
to dominant cultural groups and those who do not. These differences
and tensions form the lived experience of domination, discrimination
and disadvantage relative to others. Critical theories therefore start from
a structural analysis of social problems, looking for the historical, political
and economic bases of exploitation and discrimination.
The world- view underpinning critical theories is one in which
people have agency but are caught up in social relationships of dom-
ination and exploitation that result from the historical development of
capitalist societies (Glaister 2008). Critical theories such as particular
forms of Marxism emphasise the possibilities of social change through
collective action, the importance of the ways in which social problems

are analysed and represented, and the ways in which power is exercised
in contemporary societies.
PRACTICE KNOWLEDGE/APPROACHES
Practice theories (‘strengths-based’, ‘feminist practice’, ‘anti-oppressive
practice’, ‘anti-racist practice’, ‘culturally sensitive practice’) try to address
immediate needs while locating the source of ‘the problem’ outside of the
individual expressing the symptoms of the problem. Practice knowledge
is shaped by the historical and current social, economic and political
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contexts of practice. Practice approaches are therefore constantly

changing as our social and political contexts change. This means prac-
tice approaches reflect their current circumstances, are incomplete and
are therefore contested/contestable. They attempt to bridge the ‘gap’
between our understandings of the world (how and why the world is a
particular way) and our need to act, and in this way provide some guid-
ance for particular situations. For example, in a social context in which
one group has dominated the resources and possibilities available at the
expense of other groups, and has made use of particular ways of seeing
the world to categorise and devalue the groups they dominate, practice
approaches that are ‘anti’ that way of being emerge—anti-racist practice
is a clear example of this. In a society that promoted egalitarian relation-
ships and afforded equal status to all genders, there would be no need for
feminist practice. Each of these examples shows how a pre-existing state
of inequality or injustice provides the impetus for practice that seeks to
redress (or at least not reproduce) the injustice.
Practice approaches informed by critical theories speak to the prac-
titioner as much as to the situation of the service user—that is, they are
concerned with the potential to reproduce oppressive power relation-
ships within the helping relationship between worker and service user,
and because of this will often involve discussions of self-awareness and
reflexivity (Allan et al. 2009; Glaister 2008; Heron 2005; Hosken 2010).
While practice theories (for the reasons outlined above) will never
be able to ‘tell us what to do’ in any given situation, they can provide
principles and processes that allow us to remain faithful to professional
values and remind us that we are there to support rather than control
service users.
THE LINKS BETWEEN PERSPECTIVE, THEORY AND MODEL: ‘PRAXIS’

‘Praxis’ is a concept adopted by critical theorists to reflect the idea that

theory and practice continuously influence and shape each other—
that to ‘practise’ is not simply to apply a pre-determined solution to a
problem and that sometimes ‘the right thing to do’ is not obvious, but
emerges from an interaction between our ways of seeing the situation
(theory) and the possibilities available for action (practice) (Allan et
al. 2009; McDonald et al. 2011). While praxis is an extremely useful
concept for talking about what social workers do, in order to develop
praxis first, you need to be clear about your own world-view and the
theories (ways of seeing) that are consistent with that world-view.
Regardless of whether or not social workers consider themselves to
be theoretically oriented, all action is informed by a way of seeing and
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thinking about the world, and sometimes the challenge is to make clear
what that way of seeing the world involves and entails for others. Some
key dimensions of a critical analysis for practice are outlined below.
KEY DIMENSIONS OF A CRITICAL ANALYSIS FOR PRACTICE/CRITICAL

PRACTICE APPROACH
While critical theory in social work practice has been criticised for
lacking direction in its practice approaches (Harms 2007), it is possible
to summarise key domains of concern for anti-oppressive approaches
that come out of critical theoretical ways of seeing and thinking about
the world. The domains include:
• the use of language, both in practice and policy frameworks within

which we operate, and what possible subject positions different
discourses produce for service users and practitioners
• the range of possible power relationships that are constructed in
and by the ‘helping encounter’, and what these dynamics mean
in terms of ‘empowerment’ and ‘human potential’
• the need to understand the historical development of particular
fields of practice and of the profession, in order to guard against
reproducing social control agendas when attempting to practise in
an anti-oppressive way (Mullaly 2010).
The use of language and particular discourses’ (see Bacchi 2009;

Furlong 2013) involves:
• framing our understanding of ‘social problems’ and their solutions

• how we speak about our work, our practice with our colleagues
and our clients (‘customers’, ‘clients’, ‘service users’), which is the
outcome of a political contest between ways of seeing the world

• how political debates and social policies construct people under
different categories as problematic and requiring intervention or
assistance (for example, ‘welfare dependent’, ‘long- term unem-
ployed’, ‘workless families’).
An awareness of power relationships and ethical practice (Allan et al.

2009) are demonstrated through:
• the language we use to frame our practice, as well as different social

positioning
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• the idea of professionalism, critically understood (How is the social

worker’s expertise ethically serving the client? Who is the client?)
• an awareness of social work’s potential to be co-opted in the service
of social injustice.
Understanding the history and development (Mullaly 2010) of :
• particular fields of practice (e.g. ‘child protection’) and particular

institutions and organisations
• social work’s relationship with particular communities—specifically
with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (in the Australian
context) and Māori people in the Aotearoa New Zealand context,
but also with people from communities currently constructed as
culturally and linguistically diverse.
Each of these dimensions is discussed in the next section, which

situates anti-
oppressive approaches in the context of their develop-
ment, and integrates them with skill sets coming from strengths-based
approaches (Saleebey & Scanlon 2006). A note of caution should be
sounded regarding the employment of strengths-based approaches: they
are not inherently anti-oppressive by design; rather, the approaches
discussed below are anti-oppressive to the extent that they reflect the
changes in social and political attitudes towards help-seeking and the
helping encounter outlined in the overview of three waves of therapy.
Conclusions that might follow from linking the perspective, theory
and practice approaches in this way include the following:
1. Even the most apparently neutral skills—including those identi-

fied as belonging to strengths-based approaches described in the
remainder of this chapter—need to be understood as informed by a
particular world-view. Everything a social worker does reflects their

understanding of what it is to be in the world, the nature of social
ill-being and the remedies for social ailments.
2. Skills deployed without an understanding of the social and political
context in which they are being used can, at worst, be used for unethical
purposes (see the case study/example below) and, at best, risk missing
the mark in terms of what service users identify as desirable outcomes.
3. A key part of ethical practice and professional integrity is under-
standing the origins of your own world-view and those of others,
and to be able to articulate how your ways of seeing the world
justify or entail your ways of acting or intervening.
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Exercise 2.1
In 2002, then Minister for Employment Services in Australia,
Mal Brough (cited in Robinson 2010), put out a media release in
which he reported on research commissioned by the Department
of Employment and Workplace Relations that showed as many as
one in six recipients of unemployment benefits were not really
looking for work at all. The research took a psychological-attitudinal
approach and mapped eight personality types that were used to
explain why people were unemployed. The eight ‘types’ described
were highly motivated drivers, struggling job seekers, drifting job
seekers, disempowered job seekers, selectives (who want a par-
ticular job), dependants, cruising job seekers and withdrawn job
seekers.
In the body of the media release were profiles of ‘cruisers’, with
the example of ‘David’ reproduced here:
David is 26 years old and has been unemployed off and on for the last
3 years. David had a difficult childhood and has been living and sup-
porting himself since he was 14 years old. He enjoys the unemployed
lifestyle because it allows him to be the master of his own time and
gives him freedom to do other things. However, the money he gets
is barely enough to survive on and so he supplements his dole pay-
ments with under-the-table casual work. David has issues with drugs
and authority, but is confident in himself and his skills and abilities.
He hates being bored and often skateboards around town, sometimes
dropping into cafes to see if there is any work available. David does
not feel he has received any help from his Job Network provider and
feels that they should be doing more for him. The paid casual jobs
that he’s had have been from his own job search efforts. He strongly
believes in his own abilities, although at times he feels employers can

be judgmental about the way he looks . . . At present he does not want
a full-time job; his ideal lifestyle would be to work in the winter and
then enjoy the summer by going on unemployment benefit. (cited in
Robinson 2010: 208)
The minister used this research to mobilise sentiment against unem-

ployed people, cast doubt on their worthiness to receive income
support and justify tougher participation and activity requirements
for people receiving unemployment benefits.
1. What are the different ways of seeing the world captured in the
minister’s comments and the story of David?
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2. Can you identify the structural dimensions of the situation the

minister is describing?
3. Can you describe the political manoeuvre that is being effected
here?
4. Can you find strengths in David’s story?
Anti-
oppressive practice provides the foundation for the Integrated
Framework because this approach acknowledges the inevitability
of structural constraints, and recognises that service users’ lives are
affected by social structures and systems (Mullaly 2010). Further, AOP
acknowledges the cultural and personal forms of oppression experi-
enced by service users, and legitimises the interpersonal nature of the
work in addressing these oppressions. AOP has emerged as a dominant
practice approach in critical social work (Dominelli 2008).
Anti-
oppressive practice has, however, been critiqued as an
approach due to its failure to offer strategies for how change can occur
at the interpersonal level—the level at which most social work practice
is played out (Healy 2005). For this reason, strengths-based approaches
have been used to integrate AOP into practice with service users. In this
text, two strengths-based practice approaches will be used: solution-
focused and narrative. Each of these challenges service providers to
learn, develop and reflect on ‘the subtle ways in which our attitudes and
language as helping professionals can be used to enable or conversely,
to disempower service users’ (Healy 2005: 167). Solution-focused and
narrative approaches have been chosen to illustrate how strengths-based
practice challenges dominant discourses about professional expertise,
and represents a shift in promoting collaborative relationships between
service providers and users.
McCashen (2005) comments on the ever-present temptation to use
power over service users rather than taking a more collaborative stance
that adopts power with them:
This occurs when an individual, group or institution assumes the right to

control or colonise others. There is an over-arching sense of superiority
found in beliefs that negate or limit the right and access to resources,
participation and self-determination. Constantly there is a need to overt the
practices which enhance the possibility of effective connection. (2005: 31)
For example, many service users feel powerless in the face of bureau-
cratic policies and processes that they experience as confusing and
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frustrating. Being able to understand and hear service users’ frustration

about service systems and advocating for them can increase the likeli-
hood of collaboration with the service user (Trotter 2013).
Acknowledging the power differential between service user and
provider while trying to empower service users is consistent with the
professional value base of both social work and welfare in Australia and
New Zealand. Fook (2002: 129) notes the fundamental values of social
work practice as ‘driven by a mission of social justice and change to
balance inequities and to create a more enabling society’. Both Australian
and New Zealand core social work and welfare professional values
include respecting the person, promoting social justice, empowerment
and autonomy, valuing people’s strengths and resilience, and being
authentic (AASW 2010; ANZSW 2005). Table 2.1 summarises McCashen’s
(2005) comparison between aspects of practice that demonstrate power
with service users as opposed to practice that demonstrates power over
service users.
Essential to this way of working is the notion of empowerment of
the service user. Healy (2005) notes that empowerment is the bridge
between strengths-based approaches and anti-oppressive approaches
because it contains the core elements of both perspectives. Strengths-
based approaches acknowledge and build on service users’ capacities,
while anti-oppressive practice is predicated on the social and structural
origins of service users’ problems. Saleebey (2012) labels his notion of
empowerment ‘strengths- based’. As the architect of strengths- based
approaches, its underpinnings are:
• respecting client strengths that can be mobilised to improve lives

• fostering motivation by building upon and utilising service users’
strengths
• gaining cooperation through the process of acknowledging strengths
• focusing on strengths to enhance service users’ personal agency and

capacity to act in particular situations.
Strengths-based approaches challenge the tendency of workers to hold

domain-specific knowledge of a problem and design a treatment that
best fits the service user’s diagnosis.
The following section will examine two strengths-based approaches
to practice: solution- focused practice and narrative practice (Elliott
2000).
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Table 2.1 A strengths approach to power
Power over Power with

• expects people to meet workers • enables professionals to form
on their ground and expects partnerships and adapt to p eople’s
people to adapt to their context contexts
• relies on professional • enables professionals to enter into
interpretations, concepts and people’s worlds and landscapes,
language and honours their language
• confines practice to t herapeutic or
• creates a context of discovery and
social work models, conventions action, improvising and trying
and t raditions new things
• relies on worker expertise and • relies on the shared expertise and
gives weight to professional knowledge of all stakeholders
knowledge and skill and gives priority to inclusive,
transparent and consultative
practice
• believes in objective knowledge— • values diversity of knowledge and
knowledge that is removed from acknowledges subjectivity
the client
• relies on having to know the • relies on finding the right
answers and tends to blame questions and a team approach
people for failure, framing them where responsibility is shared
as uncooperative, r esistant or
hopeless if things don’t work out
• enables processes and outcomes • enables processes and outcomes
to be determined by professionals to be determined in partnerships
Source: McCashen (2005: 24). Reprinted with the kind permission of Innovative
Resources © Innovative Resources 2005.
SOLUTION-FOCUSED PRACTICE
Solution-focused practice (SFP) provides an approach that emphasises
and respects people’s ability to be their own agents of change. As a

practice approach, SFP had its origins in the work of de Shazer (1994)
and de Jong and Berg (2013). The approach focuses on what service
users want to achieve rather than on their problem(s). Using this
approach, the worker does not dwell on the past, but instead focuses
on the present and future. The worker uses respectful curiosity to invite
the service user to clearly identify a preferred future, and then together
the worker and service user plan the small, incremental steps required
to achieve this. This approach to practice recognises that often there is
a need for additional resources to be factored in, and this can easily be
accommodated. Table 2.2 contrasts the difference between solution-
focused approaches as opposed to problem-focused practice.
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Table 2.2 Contrasting problem- and solution-focused approaches to practice
Problem-focused Solution-focused
Asks what is wrong and why Asks what the client wants to
change, and how
Explores historical causes and Opens space for future possibilities
present difficulties in order to find a through a focus on exceptions and
remedy resources
Searches for underlying issues—that Invites client to clarify main issues
is, the ‘real’ problem and priorities for counselling
Elaborates on emotional experience Continuously channels client affect
of client towards goals or desired actions
Assumes client is deficient, resistant, Assumes client is competent,
misguided or naïve resilient and resourceful
Labels/categorises clients in problem- Views clients as unique and
saturated ways maintains a positive view of curiosity
The worker’s primary task is to facilitate a helping relationship

in which the client is hopeful about possible change, motivated to
try making changes and engaged in discovering how to make useful
changes. The approach is based on the following assumptions:
• Change is constant and inevitable: therapeutic change is most likely

to be rapid.
• There are many ways to solve any problem, since there are always
various possibilities for personal choice, regardless of the situation.
• People always have untapped resources for coping, learning and
problem-solving that can be accessed and focused toward thera-
peutic change.
• The helping relationship is facilitated by respecting the client’s

emotional experience (pain) and their potential for change (hope).
• Life is a learning process that often involves two steps forward and
one back. Useful helping focuses on how to get on track (or back
on track), and stay on track.
• To solve a problem, one needs to know more about possible solu-
tions, not more about the problem. It is easier to start a solution
process than stop a complaint process. Focusing on goals, potential
solutions and future possibilities opens up intrapersonal and inter-
personal space for therapeutic change.
• People generally want to change, and they can tell us, behaviourally,
how to cooperate with them. The helper’s job is to join with them
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in a way that motivates change and helps service users discover how
to make changes.
• Service users must be the ones who define the problems and goals
they are willing to address, as well as the most fitting ways to
achieve these goals. They are always the experts on their own lives.
• Complex problems do not necessarily need complex solutions.
Small changes often lead to bigger changes, since change in any part
of a system influences change throughout the entire system. Change
is most likely when the focus is on small, concrete, practical, achiev-
able and observable goals.
• Seldom does anything happen all the time. ‘Exceptions’ to problems
contain strengths, resources and abilities that can help with solution
development.
These assumptions generate a set of skills for the worker to use. These
skills include developing scaling, coping, exception and miracle ques-
tions, and goal-setting (de Jong & Berg 2013; Duncan et al. 2010).
SCALING QUESTIONS
Service users are invited to put their observations, impressions about
their past experiences and predictions of future possibilities on a scale
from one to ten. This technique is a versatile, simple and useful tool
that can be utilised by anyone old enough to understand numbers.
Scaling can help in many difficult situations, such as when a problem
is vague, or where there is a series of distinct disagreements—as might
occur in some families. Scaling questions can be used to measure less
definable things such as hope or confidence. For example, Jan and Peter
differ in their approaches to parenting their adolescent children. It is
useful for the worker to understand the complexity of these differences
so she might ask both parents, ‘When you think about your own and
your partner’s parenting, how confident, on a scale of one to ten, are
you that the ideas we have discussed can be implemented?’ This ques-
tion thus becomes a reality check as to the viability of change, and the
service users’ degree of hopefulness (Duncan et al. 2010).
COPING QUESTIONS
These questions can be useful when service users are discouraged
and stuck in their difficulties. Coping questions provide a way of
gently challenging the service user’s belief system and their feelings
30
of helplessness, while at the same time orienting them towards a sense

of success (Miller et al. 1996: 89). For example, a worker might say, ‘I
am amazed that despite all these difficulties you have managed to keep
attending school. Can you tell me how you have done this?’
EXCEPTION QUESTIONS
These questions help the service user to locate and appreciate moments
in their past when the present problem had less influence or was absent
(de Jong & Berg 2013).
Exceptions may be present and predictable, or they may be random.
They may even need to be constructed hypothetically as a means of
establishing the possible presence of something different. For example,
when working with a family where getting to work or school on time
may be an issue, a worker might ask, ‘When you think about getting to
work on time, is there any difference between when you go to work
in the term time or in the school holidays?’ This question then opens
up the possibility for exploration of why there might be reasons for the
differences. Or a worker might inquire hypothetically, ‘If you were to
do something different before the children went to bed, what would
you experience when you all get up for school in the morning?’ This
question is designed to encourage the client to explore the difference
if the problem is not present. The difference might relate to the client’s
behaviour, thinking, actions or experiences.
Exercise 2.2
In pairs, interview one another about the following:
Consider a real concern/worry/issue that you have experi-
enced—one that you don’t mind sharing in pairs.
• Ask your partner a scaling question:

– ‘How far along on a scale of 1–5 are you in sorting out the
problem?’
– ‘Have you ever been higher or lower on the scale in sorting
out this problem?’
– ‘What was the difference at these times?’
• Ask your partner an exception question:
– ‘Have there been times when the issue has not been so much
of a problem?’
– ‘What’s been happening at those times?’
– ‘What’s different about those times?’
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Narrative practice is the other strengths-based approach used in this

text. Its origins are in both Australia in the work of Michael White
and in New Zealand in the work of David Epston (White & Epston
1990).
NARRATIVE PRACTICE
Narrative practice focuses on personal stories as a way to guide how
people think, act and feel, and how they make sense of any new experi-
ence. These guiding stories have the effect of organising the information
of a person’s life, and the ability to refocus on previously unnoticed
or denigrated pieces of information that can assist service users to ‘re-
author’ their lives (White 1995, 2002).
Underlying this approach is the perspective that identity is mal-
leable and co-created in relationship with others, as well as by one’s
own history. Thus our identity is socially constructed. Service users are
encouraged to use alternative stories of identity to overcome obstacles
to achieve their preferred ways of life. For example, there may be a shift
from identifying as a ‘victim’ to identifying as a ‘survivor’. A narrative
practice approach places the experiences of the person in a central
position, with an interest in exceptions rather than the ‘rules’ and
specific context. Stories we have about our lives shape how we think
and behave, how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us
(Bacon 2013). Stories filter and focus our understandings, the meanings
we make of things and our feelings. Sometimes these stories can blind
us to ways of feeling, thinking and behaving that do not fit with the
interpretation we have of our lives. We all have key stories about our-
selves that we hang on to tightly. These stories have been developed
jointly by ourselves and the important people who have influenced our
lives, as well as by the wider community. We do not have to passively

accept the stories with which we have lived, or those that are imposed
upon us. The worker’s primary task in narrative practice is to help
service users recognise that these stories can be rewritten (White 1988,
2002). The dominant story does not have to define or constrain a per-
son’s way of being in the world.
A narrative practice approach is based on the following assumptions
(Morgan 2000):
• The problem is the problem. (The person is not the problem.)

• People have expertise about their own lives.
32
• People can become the primary authors of the stories of their own
lives.
• Problems are constructed in cultural contexts. These include power,
relations of race, class, sexual preference, gender and disadvantage.
• The problems for which people seek consultation usually cause
them to reach conclusions about their lives and relationships. Often
these conclusions have encouraged them to consider themselves
as deficient in some way, and this view makes it difficult to access
personal knowledge, competencies, skills and abilities.
• These skills, competencies and knowledges can be made available
to service users to assist them to reclaim their lives from the influ-
ence of the problem.
• There are always occasions in a person’s life where they have
escaped the influence of a problem.
• Problems never successfully claim 100 per cent of people’s lives or
relationships.
These assumptions generate two key skills in narrative practice—exter-

nalising the problem and re-authoring.
• Externalising locates problems as products of culture and history,

with problems being understood to have been socially constructed
and created over time and outside of the individual. This means that
workers encourage the service user to locate the problem outside of
themselves so that it is not ‘them’, but rather an externalised issue,
that is the problem. For example, a person experiencing anxiety
may be encouraged to wonder how anxiety (external to them) has
begun to have power over them.
• Re-authoring recognises that sociocultural forces, norms and
alleged truths become embedded in the internalised stories of indi-
viduals. This shapes and determines how service users understand

their lives, and can lead to self-defeating behaviours. Re-authoring
allows a service user to review the history they have accepted and
re-evaluate their story from a different perspective. This process can
foster a greater sense of agency and recognition of the overwhelm-
ing power of structural constraints.
CONCLUSION
This chapter ends with a caution about using strengths-based practice
approaches without an appreciation of the broader structural, cultural
33
Exercise 2.3: Externalising conversation

Consider a characteristic or trait, quality or emotion that you dislike
in yourself. Give the characteristic, trait, quality or emotion a name
(x), then answer the following questions:
1. How does x impact on your life?
2. What would things be like if x were not in control?
3. What kinds of things happen that typically lead you to x?
Note the overall effect of answering those questions:
4. How do you feel?
5. What seems possible?
6. What seems impossible?
and personal oppressions impacting on the people with whom we work

(Egan 2012). Simply using the word ‘strengths’ in our work with clients
does not translate our work into anti-oppressive practice. AOP practice
requires an understanding of the structures that disadvantage many of
the service users with whom we will engage. Further, this requires
service providers to prepare for practice. Preparation for practice
includes the intellectual preparation of incorporating the knowledge
that informs practice, and the ethical basis of social work practice,
which then form the basis for tuning into the service user’s world.
34

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2

CRITICAL ANTI-­OPPRESSIVE AND

• To identify and make the conceptual links between critical

The Integrated Framework introduced in Chapter 1 (see Figure 1.1),

between field education academics and other social work academics,

collective action, the importance of the ways in which social problems

contexts of practice. Practice approaches are therefore constantly

THE LINKS BETWEEN PERSPECTIVE, THEORY AND MODEL: ‘PRAXIS’

‘Praxis’ is a concept adopted by critical theorists to reflect the idea that

KEY DIMENSIONS OF A CRITICAL ANALYSIS FOR PRACTICE/CRITICAL

• the use of language, both in practice and policy frameworks within

The use of language and particular discourses’ (see Bacchi 2009;

• framing our understanding of ‘social problems’ and their solutions

outcome of a political contest between ways of seeing the world

An awareness of power relationships and ethical practice (Allan et al.

• the language we use to frame our practice, as well as different social

• the idea of professionalism, critically understood (How is the social

Understanding the history and development (Mullaly 2010) of :

• particular fields of practice (e.g. ‘child protection’) and particular

Each of these dimensions is discussed in the next section, which

1. Even the most apparently neutral skills—including those identi-

particular world-­view. Everything a social worker does reflects their

believes in his own abilities, although at times he feels employers can

The minister used this research to mobilise sentiment against unem-

2. Can you identify the structural dimensions of the situation the

This occurs when an individual, group or institution assumes the right to

frustrating. Being able to understand and hear service users’ frustration

• respecting client strengths that can be mobilised to improve lives

• focusing on strengths to enhance service users’ personal agency and

Strengths-­based approaches challenge the tendency of workers to hold

Table 2.1 A strengths approach to power

Power over Power with

and respects people’s ability to be their own agents of change. As a

Table 2.2 Contrasting problem- and solution-focused approaches to practice

The worker’s primary task is to facilitate a helping relationship

• Change is constant and inevitable: therapeutic change is most likely

• The helping relationship is facilitated by respecting the client’s

of helplessness, while at the same time orienting them towards a sense

• Ask your partner a scaling question:

Narrative practice is the other strengths-­based approach used in this

lives, as well as by the wider community. We do not have to passively

• The problem is the problem. (The person is not the problem.)

These assumptions generate two key skills in narrative practice—exter-

• Externalising locates problems as products of culture and history,

viduals. This shapes and determines how service users understand

Exercise 2.3: Externalising conversation

and personal oppressions impacting on the people with whom we work

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CRITICAL ANTI-OPPRESSIVE AND

particular world-view. Everything a social worker does reflects their

Strengths-based approaches challenge the tendency of workers to hold

Narrative practice is the other strengths-based approach used in this