This paper presents a strategy for introducing empowerment approaches to undergraduate students in social work. At the same time it incorporates a focus on developing student skills in the practice relationship. An emphasis on a strengths-based assessment model as an empowering practice intervention helps students to understand the relationship between individual strengths and a collective empowerment lens. The overall quality of the client/worker relationship is explored as well as particular practice techniques in interviewing. The strategy uses an interactive, experiential exercise format that engages students both in process and content. Instructional goals and a subjective learning evaluation process are discussed.
The history of social work practice is replete with metaphors for empowerment. Jane Addams' Hull House, Bertha Capen Reynolds' emphasis on “plain people” (1964), and the inclusion of Freirean “dialogic processes” (1973) represent a few of the efforts that have shaped current social work practice models of empowerment that target oppression. In the reactionary political climate of the 1990s, the call for empowerment approaches has gained nearly as much urgency as oppression itself.
This paper will examine the relationship of empowerment principles to social work practice and education and will demonstrate the usefulness of the strengths perspective in making political/empowerment issues relevant to BSW students. It will incorporate Charles Cowger's work on assessment (Cowger, 1992Cowger, 1997) and through it will consider appropriate instructional goals, including skill development necessary to building relationships with clients. Finally, it will describe the link from individual strengths-based relationships to an empowerment stance.