People have strengths. As individuals as well as members of communities, they have assets and they learn to cope with difficult situations and develop resilience. Yet, certain traditional practices and policies overlook these strengths and instead concentrate overwhelmingly on people's deficits. A strength-based orientation helps identify and build on individual and community assets, resilience, and ability to thrive in difficult situations. 

Workers and organizations have strengths. Workers bring into the workplace a variety of skills, experiences, and creative potential. A strength-based orientation in an organization recognizes staff members' unique skills, talents, and resources and integrates them into organizational practice. An organization with this orientation provides opportunities for employees to fully utilize and develop their strengths. Employees are encouraged to take risks, achievements and accomplishments are celebrated, and missteps are seen as opportunities for learning.

Resources Related to Strength-based Practice

On-Site Papers

Community Wellness and Control in the Canadian Arctic: Collective Agency as Subjective Well-Being (Kral & Idlout 2007)

Promoting Well-being: Time for a Paradigm Shift in Health and Human Services (Prilleltensky 2005)

Links

Improving the Health of Canadians: Exploring Positive Mental Health (Canadian Institute of Mental Health, 2009)

"Mental health is more than the absence of mental illness. It is a component of overall health and is shaped by individual, physical environment, social, cultural and socio-economic characteristics. Increasingly, mental health is moving to the forefront of discussions and action on overall health and well-being. However, much of the work in this area to date has not focused on supporting the development of positive mental health; instead, it has had a primary focus on mental illness, specifically service-, access- and stigma-related issues. This was seen as a gap by the experts with whom CPHI consulted regarding the focus of this report."

Mental Health, Resilience and Inequalities (pdf) (World Health Organization Europe, 2009) Excerpt:

"A greater understanding of inequalities is also crucial to recognizing the limits of what promoting positive mental health can achieve. Positive mental health does confer considerable protection and advantage, but it does so predominantly among those with equal levels of resources. In other words, among poor children, those with higher levels of emotional wellbeing have better educational outcomes than their equally poor peers. However, richer children generally do better still, regardless of emotional or cognitive capability. Among well off students, high positive affect is associated with improved employment outcomes, but among poorer students, parental income is a more significant determinant. Emerging evidence suggests that the same pattern may be true for resilient localities: high levels of social capital may help to explain why one poor neighbourhood has lower mortality than other equally deprived areas, but these poorer, resilient communities still tend to have higher mortality than affluent areas."