Customer Reviews:
 Social work book September 20, 2007
The book came fairly quickly,the price was fair, and the book was in good shape
Good June 15, 2007
Informative book. I used for my class
Not "business-as-usual" this book will change your practice! December 14, 1998
37 out of 38 found this review helpful
I am a substance abuse therapist (part-time) and a Senior Juvenile Court Officer (full-time) for 17 years working with adolescents here in Lansing, Michigan. I am also strength-based (asset-building) in my personal practice approach with teens. I believe that we've heard the call before to work from the successful side, the resilient side of people, but we were never given the techniques as we are now with this book. That is what I see as the most promising aspect of this current strengths movement...the one-two punch of mindset and techniques. Any helping professional owes it to themselves to read this book. It is a real career changer. Most asset-building is aimed at the community level or agency/policy level. I am greatly concerned with asset-building on a one-to-one level of interpersonal work and how this can be used to approach people for more effective work. It looks to what the client can do vs. can't do, what they've been successful at rather than what they've failed at, what they have, vs. what they don't have. It runs counter to the "medical model" of deficit-based work that centers in on "flaw-fixing." I have published several articles and do trainings for raising motivation and cooperation with adolescents in the juvenile justice system through strength-based strategies. Most of my work, and this tremendous change in my practice, came from this book and the first volume published in 1992. Among many methods in my training I use a joke about a drunk man to change mindset. It's an old joke but very applicable: In the middle of the city, a beat cop encounters a drunk, crawling around on his hands and knees seemingly looking for something at night,directly under astreet lamp. When the cop stops and inquires what he's doing, the drunk responds, "I'm looking for my car keys that I lost in the bushes!" The cop laughs and says, "Hey buddy, if you lost your keys over there in the bushes,why are you looking here under the street light?" To which the drunk replies indignantly, "Boy are you stupid, it's too dark to look for them over in the bushes!!" Old joke. But, we in the helping professions are so much like the drunk man. We look for the "keys" to clients problems in the area of greatest illumination which is always the PROBLEM, the failures, what's missing, wrong, etc. We have specialized tests to look there, interviewing strategies that look there, that is where all the attention is placed. Yet the "keys" are in the dark, in the "bushes" which certainly represents anyone's strengths, talents, past successes and perseverance (etc.) .............so why no methods to look in these areas? That's where strength-based practice comes in to give methods to elicit and amplify these areas. Check this book out, I believe you'll be thinking and working differently after you finish.
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