Empowerment : social workers ’ representations and practices

1. Social Workand Social Development: actionandimpact Stockholm, 8-12 july 2012 Empowerment: social workers’ representationsandpractices Carla Pinto ISCSP/CAPP Project Health, Risk and Governmentalization PTDC/SAU-ESA/101309/2008

2. Definingempowerment • The term empowerment is now almost omnipresent in social work literature • It is a value, a policy and technical principle of action and a methodology of social work • Nevertheless this concept is plural and multidimensional, and also ambiguous, controversial and differently understood and experienced • This ambiguity helps the general use and abuse of the term Temática

3. Definingempowerment • Process of recognition, creation and use of resources and skills, by individuals, groups and communities, in themselves and in their environment, that translates to an increase of power– psychological, social, cultural, politicalandeconomic – that allows these subjects to increase the effective exercise of citizenship Temática

4. Definingempowerment ... implies the recognition of the existence of power differentials in societies and an axiological valuation of these differentials ... implies the real possibility of changing power imbalances, whether on an individual or collective level Temática

5. Definingempowerment • Complementarity of skills of the actors -redefinitionofprofessionalpractices • Emphasis on action and acting together • Preferred action with marginalized and excluded populations • Action at different levels and dimensions of analysis Temática

6. Objectives • How do social workers represent empowerment? • How do social workers practice empowerment? • obstacles for empowerment practices? • convergences and divergences: authenticity • representations and practices • theoretical/academic and social workers’ representations and practices of empowerment

7. Method • Non probabilistic sample of social workers • Semi-structured interviews based on a script, applied liberally - a total of 37 interviews were carried out • Diversity of gender, age, type of work organization and thematic areas of intervention • Qualitative analysis techniques: simplified content analysis (Poirier et alli, 1995)

8. Characterizationofinterviwees • 32 women and 5 men • Average age : 32.8 years, with a minimum age of 24 and a maximum of 56 years old • average of years of professional experience in social work: 8 years, with a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 21 years

9. Conceptofempowerment • valued by participants as an important concept • recent contact with the concept (from late 1990’s) • mostly viewed as a goal and as a process, more than as a theoretical model or philosophy of practice • social workers’ conceptions of empowerment connected to their practice settings, namely type of agency, clients and aims of intervention

10. EMPOWERMENT Dynamicinteractionbetween REPRESENTATIONS PRACTICES Micro InterventionSocio-educationalactions Information, advice social workprocess Participation Institutionalarticulationand between agencies Major constraints: Micro and Meso level Importantconcept, Personalandinterpersonalbutdiffult to applyInterventions Capacitation Consciousness Autonomy, self-determination Accountability, Freedom To givepower Participate, citizenship Access to resources, to connect Representations and practices of empowerment

11. Authenticityof a concept • Convergences: • the representations and practices of empowerment among social workers are in large majority convergent • individual empowerment, in a context of great individualization of interventions • Differences: • happen between professionals and academic-theoretical knowledge about the empowerment • Gap, more or less assumed, from social, political and structural processes • De-politicizinganddes-empowermentofempowerment

12. Someimplications… • Greater importance of elements closer to a contextualized and located practice, in construction of professional action • Relational proximity context: more power and (but) biggest weaknesses • Proximity as a trap for the autonomous individuals project

13. Some implications… • The need for vocational training, initial and life-long learning, to promote: • a different attitude for further integration micro-meso-macro practice • a much closer relationship between academia and practitioners

14. Some implications… • The paradigm shift that we are facing requires, more than ever, individuals as political agents • The need to “re-socialise” and "re-politicise" social problems and social needs, and consequently, social work • The need for a professional practice that evidences a greater balance and integration of “micro-meso-macro” practice

15. Social Workand Social Development: actionandimpact Stockholm, 8-12 july 2012 Thankyou for yourattention! Feel free to contact cpinto@iscsp.utl.pt