- Title
- Working with fathers: guidelines for strengths-based practice and research
- Creator
- Fletcher, Richard
- Relation
- The Strengths and Assets Summit 2010: 6th Australian Family and Community Strengths Conference and the 2nd ABCD Asia Pacific Conference. 6th Australian Family & Community Strengths Conference (Newcastle, N.S.W. 30 November - 3 December, 2010)
- Relation
- http://www.newcastle.edu.au/research-centre/fac/conferences/strengths-and-assets-summit
- Publisher
- University of Newcastle
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2010
- Description
- There are now many texts and papers drawing out the implications of adopting a strengths-based approach to family work in contrast to a pathologising or conventional or problem-based approach. Here is one example of the criteria for strengths-based practice: 1. Every Individual, group, family and community has strengths ; 2. Trauma, abuse, illness, and struggle may be injurious, but they may also be sources of challenge and opportunity ; 3. We best serve our clients by collaborating with them ; 4. Assume that you do not know the upper limits of the capacity to grow and change, and take individual, group, and community aspirations seriously ; 5. Every environment is full of resources ; 6. Caring, caretaking, and context are important. While the proponents of strengths-based approaches are at pains to point to the radical break with usual practice entailed in these guidelines, to anyone recently trained in the helping professions, these guides to practice hardly need mentioning; everyone, these days, is a strengths-based practitioner. In this paper, rather than examine the benefits or drawbacks of a strengths-based approach, I will be taking it as given that a strengths-based approach is desirable for family-related services and address my remarks to the question of how this approach might be applied to fathers in particular. The criteria for strengths-based family practice listed above will be applied to working with fathers while highlighting the research implications of applying the strengths approach to fathers. The intention in this presentation is to offer a set of principles which can guide service development to be more effective with families.
- Subject
- fathers; families; strengths-based practice
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/935971
- Identifier
- uon:12182
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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