Strength-based Practice

Strength-based practice is a social work and psychological practice theory that emphasizes a person's self-determination and existing strengths rather than focusing on deficits or pathology. It treats its subject, originally a psychological patient but in extended use also an employee, colleague or other person, as resourceful and resilient in the face of adversity, and it is client-led, oriented toward future outcomes and the strengths a person already brings to a problem or crisis. Applied beyond social work itself, the same orientation is called the strength-based approach, including strength-based leadership and strength-based learning communities, and it can focus on an individual's own strengths as well as on the wider social and community networks around that person.