Empowerment and Human Needs: Towards a Unified Concept of Practice

Workshop Description: The author presents a conceptualization of social work practice which links two concepts central to social work: empowerment and basic human needs.  Social work s primary mission involves both empowering individuals to address their own needs and working for a social environment that is responsive to human needs.  These are often conceptualized as micro and macro, respectively. A unifying conceptualization of social work practice is presented for discussion that focuses on the role of social workers as we stand side by side with clients and communities at the point of intersection of individuals and the social environment.

 

How does it fit the theme? The workshop seeks to present a conceptualization and produce discussion aimed at moving social work forward towards the development of a unifying paradigm of social work practice that builds upon the empowerment, strengths and ecosystems models but integrates into them a clear conceptualization of human needs as well as a conceptualization of the sources of social injustice which social workers confront in our daily micro and macro practice.

 

Goal: The goal of the workshop is to both present a new integration of human needs theory with empowerment, strengths and ecosystems models of practice but also to produce vigorous debate and discussion about ways of moving social work forward beyond artificial divisions between models of micro and macro practice.

 

Objectives: * Integrate emerging human needs theory into models of social work    * Propose a unifying paradigm for social work practice    * Debate and discuss the merits of such an approach and alternative conceptualizations arising from daily work of practitioners