Reflections from ADASS Spring Seminar
Reflections from ADASS Spring Seminar
There was an uplifting spirit as this year's event, with a greater focus on what the sector can do rather than retelling well-known financial challenges
This article originally appeared in The MJ.
Strengths-based approaches have been a talking point within adult social care since the launch of the Care Act in 2014, and interest has only increased as the sector considers how to pursue better outcomes with ever-reducing budgets.
A good starting point for a definition of a strengths-based approach is that used by Lyn Romeo, England’s Chief Social Worker for Adults, in the Strengths-based approach handbook published by the Department of Health and Social Care: “It is about enabling people to find the best solutions for themselves, to support them in making independent decisions about how they live. I whole heartedly believe in taking a strengths and asset-based approach to supporting individuals and empower people to live the lives they want.”
At IMPOWER, we have helped dozens of councils to get the most from using the approach. Our experience is that a strengths-based approach provides a framework that – when adopted across a whole system – helps people to live more independent lives and enables councils to focus on getting the best possible outcomes with the money they have available.
However, ‘strengths-based’ is a term that is often bandied around as a solution to almost all of the issues facing adult social care. Our experience is that councils have gained the most ground and delivered the greatest impact when their use of the approach goes beyond a process or practice framework. That means:
Councils who have taken a less comprehensive approach – and there are cases where the approach has been seen as little more than a training opportunity for frontline social work staff – have had much less success. But the good news is that over the last two or three years, we have seen a move away from simply bringing in a trainer to deliver one-off training courses. Instead, an increasing number of services have chosen to reframe their vision and delivery through a strengths-based lens.
There are numerous examples of councils benefitting from the comprehensive adoption of a strengths-based approach; some examples of what this has meant in practise are given below.
These examples – and those from many other councils – show that embracing a strengths-based approach brings wide-ranging benefits. Supporting people to remain independent not only improves their wellbeing and reduces spend on long-term care packages, but also improves employee engagement by enabling staff to have more immediate positive impact on people’s lives.