Working with Strengths

Working with Strengths is a handbook to delivering person-centred practice and recovery. The language in health and social care is littered with references to person-centred care, person-centred planning, personalisation, self-directed support, recovery and enablement. However, there remains a degree of confusion between service users, carers, practitioners, managers and commissioners about the practical delivery of these concepts in daily practice. A consistent theme throughout all of these concepts is the need to identify and work with people's strengths (i.e. their abilities, capabilities, qualities, motivations, wants and aspirations). Outside of health and social care, the Gallup Organisation has identified through decades of research that focusing on strengths is at the heart of every successful business. So, it is not something that should only impact on the thinking and working of practitioners. Working with Strengths elaborates on how we need to place strengths as the driving force for staff development, team development and organisational leadership.