Empowerment Practice with Families in Distress

Author: Judith Bula Wise Series: Empowering the Powerless: A Social Work Series

This book integrates time-honored approaches to empowerment practice with today's more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. Synthesizing several theoretical supports--the strengths perspective, system theory, theories of family well-being, and theories of coping--the author responds to the question "What works?" with today's families in need. Practice illustrations are provided throughout.

Integrates time-honored approaches with more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. This book presents illustrations to bring concepts to life and, more important, to present families describing their own experiences with achieving empowerment.

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Summary

Description

For more than 150 years, empowering practices have been used by social workers in their work with families, but the techniques of today differ significantly from those of the pioneers or even from those of a few years ago. Today's practitioners recognize that empowering others is impossible; social workers can, however, assist others as they empower themselves. This book integrates time-honored approaches with today's more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. Synthesizing several theoretical supports-the strengths perspective, system theory, theories of family well-being, and theories of coping-the author responds to the question "What works?" with today's families in need. Practice illustrations are provided throughout to bring concepts to life and, more important, to present families describing their own experiences with achieving empowerment.

Critic Reviews

“"This volume adds to the discourse of empowerment practice with families." -- Raymond Rodriguez, Social Work with Groups”

"This book reveals the great potential of empowerment practices through specific principles and actual case materials." -- Families In Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Sciences "This volume adds to the discourse of empowerment practice with families." -- Raymond Rodriguez, Social Work with Groups

About the Author

Judith Bula Wise, professor emerita, has held academic positions at Columbia University and the University of Denver. She is the coeditor, with Marian Bussey, of Trauma Transformed: An Empowerment Response (Columbia University Press) and has developed and served as the first coordinator of the Trauma Response Certificate Program at the University of Denver.