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Use of the term empowerment
The term empowerment is not always embraced positively. Some writers feel that it is a patronising term, that workers may choose to bestow limited empowerment on marginalised groups without ever really challenging the basic conditions that render some people powerless. While understanding and accepting the place of this critique, we apply the term positively. We see the need for the empowerment of people who are disadvantaged in a winners and losers society (Stilwell). We are committed to the sense of partnership and rust implicit in the term and in using knowledge actively to assist people with whom we work and to facilitate (not bestow)their empowerment (hogan). Lfe argues that........ enabling the powerless to achieve more power is, for many social workers, exactly what their practice is all about Accordingly, we value the importance of real and meaningful and lasting. Change in the lives of people such as parents of children is ultimately in the interests of their children. Why empowerment group work? Group work as a method is beneficial to people who can meet with others engaged in similar struggles, share experiences and both offer and receive support. Brown asserts that empowerment of group members is embodied in the tradition of social group work. He notes that empowerment is both a goal and a process and that the role of the gorup worker is seen as that of helping members get in touch with resources, develop self-knowledge and learn necessary skills for increased achievement (Brown 1991) In similar vein, Mullender and ward(1991)attest to the following benefits of empowerment group work：
Through resisting labels, raising awareness and then assisting service users in setting their own agendas for change, it has led to the achievement of unattainable goals by individuals previously written off as inadequate and beyond help.(Mullender&Ward 1991, pp.
Given that group work as an approach is beneficial to vulnerable people generally, it is important to argue for its merit in relation to outcomes for children in care whose parents participate in empowerment groups. In our view there are two major reasons why empowerment group work with parents is worth doing.
1 If there is hope of restoration of children in care to their families, proactive work that keeps parents involved and keen to work in partnership with workers, who themselves frequently find such relationships difficult, is clearly of value.
2 If there is little prospect of children returning home, it is nevertheless in the interests of children. Parents frequently become discouraged and fall away from contact (Sultmann & Testro 2001) and any strategies that can prevent this occurring appear to have merit. For many children in care experiencing multiple placements, the family of origin is frequently the most enduring of relationships and the identity needs of children can be safeguarded by contact with their families (Sultmann & Testro 2001). Many seek out their families on exiting from care (Sultmann & Testro 2001). It is imperative therefore that children and young people as clients in the child protection system be seen in the context of connections with kin and cultural heritage.
History of this approach
One of the authors, Ros Thorpe, pioneered group work with parents in the UK in the 1970s. The impetus for the work came out of her PhD research where she studied identity issues for children in long-term statutory care in Nottingham and traced and interviewed the children's natural parents (Thorpe 1974). Subsequently, while working in Nottinghamshire Children's Department, she established a parents' support group along with a social work student on placement (Gibbs &Thorpe 1975). This kind of work continues in Britain today under the auspices of, among other bodies, the London-based Family Rights Group. Regrettably, there has been little in the way of a tradition in this regard in Australia. |
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