Empowering relationships

This chapter from Roger Smith's Social Work and Power provides a basic analytical framework and associated tools and methods for understanding and working with power dynamics in social work interventions.

The approach set out here is based on the assumption that all aspects of the practice relationship are inter-connected. Practitioners need to factor in those less immediately visible aspects of their interactions with service users which will also shape mutual expectations and experiences.

Both practitioners and service users come to specific interactions with embedded notions of the power dynamics likely to be at work. These expectations are informed both by individual experiences and assumptions and by wider influences which themselves shape the context for the interaction. Some potential strategies to take account of and address these issues are identified here.

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