Person in Environment

1. SOWK 777 Module 2
Life Course Perspective
Strengths-based Approach
Person-in-Environment Perspective
Teri Browne, MSW, PhD

2. LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE
• looks at how chronological age, relationships, common life
transitions, and social change shape people’s lives from birth to
death
• calls attention to how historical time, social location, and culture
affect the individual experience of each life stage
• recognizes that life is not a straight path, but has both
continuities and twists and turns

3. LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE
• A way of looking at life not as disconnected stages, but as an
integrated continuum
• Suggests that a complex interplay of
• biological,
• behavioral,
• psychological,
• and social protective and risk factors
contributes to health and mental health outcomes across
the span of a person’s life

4. LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE
• A life course approach recognizes the role of time in shaping
health and mental health outcomes and incorporates time into
models explaining health and mental health outcomes.

5. LIFE COURSE
PERSPECTIVE

6. LIFE COURSE
PERSPECTIVE

7. LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE
• Attempts to understand the continuities as well as the twists and turns in
the paths of individual lives.
• Recognizes the influence of historical changes on human behavior.
• Recognizes the importance of timing of lives not just in terms of
chronological age, but also in terms of biological age, psychological age,
social age, and spiritual age.
• Emphasizes the ways in which humans are interdependent and gives
special attention to the family as the primary arena for experiencing and
interpreting the wider social world.
• Sees humans as capable of making choices and constructing their own life
journeys, within systems of opportunities and constraints.
• Emphasizes diversity in life journeys and the many sources of that
diversity.
• Recognizes the linkages between childhood and adolescent experiences
and later experiences in adulthood.

8. STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH
• set of ideas, assumptions, and techniques:
• People are active participants in the helping process (empowerment)
• All people have strengths, often untapped or unrecognized
• Strengths foster motivation for growth
• Strengths are internal and environmental

9. NEEDS VS STRENGTHS
What do you see?
A glass half-empty…
Or half-full?
Photo: Tropical Cyclone Pam has caused widespread destruction
in Vanuatu. Credit: Adventist Development and Relief Agency.

10. STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH
• Strengths
• Talents
• Skills
• Knowledge
• Interests
• Dreams/Hopes/Goals
• Creativity
• Culture
• Passion
• Connections

11. STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH
• What people have learned about themselves, others and their
world
• Personal qualities, traits and virtues
• What people know about the world around them
• The talents people have
• Cultural and personal stories and lore
• Pride
• The community

12. STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH
• Any person can recover and take control over their life
• Focus is placed on the strengths rather than on weaknesses or
difficulties
• The person is in control of the intervention. They are in charge of the
direction of the services
• The therapeutic relationship is based on trust and empowerment of the
person
• The favoured place of intervention is the community
• The community is an oasis of resources

13. STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH
• builds the clients on their strengths, specifically seeing them as
resourceful and resilient when they are in adverse conditions
• Strength-based approach not only examines the individual but
also the individual’s environment
• identifies any constraints that might be holding back an
individual’s growth. These constraints can be when the
individual has to deal with social, personal and/or cultural issues
in organizations that cannot be balanced fairly

14. STRENGTHS-
BASED
APPROACH

15. STRENGTHS-
BASED
APPROACH

16. STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH
• Solution Focused Therapy (SFT) focuses on what people want
to achieve rather than on the problem(s) that made them seek
help. Encouraging people who are supported by services to
focus on determining their own pathways and solutions to reach
their goals can lead to dramatically different actions and
thoughts than when pursuing answers to problems.
• SFT (and Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)) has been
used in family service and mental health settings, in public
social services and child welfare, in prisons and residential
treatment centers and in schools and hospitals

17. PERSON-IN-ENVIRONMENT PERSPECTIVE
• The social worker perceives each individual as an interactive
participant in a larger physical, social communal, historical,
religious, physical, cultural, and familial environmental system
• This approach is the concept that people can be heavily
influenced by their environment. It highlights the importance of
understanding an individual and their behavior through their
environment. A person’s environment, along with their
experiences, will help shape the way they view the world, how
they think, and why they respond the way they do.

18. PERSON-IN-ENVIRONMENT PERSPECTIVE
• core concept in social work
• some even claim that this concept, which characterizes
social work as a profession that seeks to change and improve
the lives of individuals and society and the relationship between
them, is what distinguishes social work from other helping
professions
• views the individual and his or her multiple environments as
a dynamic, interactive system, in which each component
simultaneously affects and is affected by the other