Social Work Strengths Assessment

their own strengths, thereby enhancing the clients’ confidence as well as worker client relationship. This highlights the need for a structured strengths assessment.
In a 1995 paper titled, “A Strengths Perspective in Practice: Older People and Mental Health Challenges” (88), the authors describe a case study in which the strengths perspective was used.
Mrs. K. was a 76-year-old lady who had lost her spouse recently after 35 years of being married. Mrs. K was educated and had worked as a legal secretary prior to getting married, however, post her marriage had been a homemaker. She had experienced anxiety and depression all her life, had been on anti depressants for a long time and had been hospitalized twice. She took some degree of pride in

K’s problems with a strengths orientation, the social worker had to dispense with her disbelief about old people’s abilities for change and lack of strength. Following this, the social worker began a dialogue and collaboration with Mrs. K. While she allowed the client to grieve over her husband’s passing, the worker’s focus was also simultaneously on focusing on the client’s strengths. Finally, when the client was ready to put in some thought and effort into how she would proceed with her daily living, the social worker started by asking her to discuss her family and social network in greater detail. This was a way of uncovering strengths in her social environment. Mrs. K was also asked about her specific achievements during her life. In this way, the client was herself able to see that she had handled crises in the past, including a financial one when she contributed to the family income by working at a legal firm based on her experience prior to getting married This enhanced her confidence and she considered the idea of volunteering at a law firm. Following this, goals were set by the client for the next three months and she herself outlined her priorities which included feeling a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose and activities to that end and a better sleeping pattern. Visits to the church (which the client identified as a source of strength) and a membership of a widow/widower support group were initiated. An increase in her levels of

The study was conducted at two community health centers in Ohio (USA), one of which used strengths based case management (SBCM) and the other one used the generalist case management approach. Both, the control group and the experimental group consisted of patients who were severely mentally disabled and had a DSM IIIR Axis I diagnosis of Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective or a major mood disorder and had one or more psychiatric hospitalizations, or one or more admissions to a crisis stabilization unit within 3 years before the study began. The case managers at the experimental site were trained by the researcher in SBCM. At the experimental site, 29 respondents completed the intervention, while at the generalist site, 15 respondents did so. At both the community health centers, the respondents had to fill out measures related to Quality of Life, Residential living and Vocational/Educational Status (developed during the study), Symptoms and Hospitalization Rate and number of Hospital days. The data obtained pre and post the intervention were compared using the repeated measures ANOVA for the continuous variables and using the Chi Square test for the interval variables. Results showed a significant difference in the improvement in the QoL and