How does worker-client relationship benefit clients' recovery process in regard to strengths perspective?

Abstract

Medical model has been the dominant practice in mental health service for many decades. In 1985, Dr. Charles Rapp and Ronna Chamberlain have developed a totally different perspective to view mental illnesses, which is the strengths perspective. The main contrasting standpoint of these two frameworks is that medical model emphasizes strongly on the expertise of the social worker while strengths based practice focuses more on the clients’ capacities to recover (Saleebey, 2006, p.17). The worker-client relationship will be influenced tremendously as the power and position of workers and clients will tend to be more equal than and not as hierarchical as the one in medical model. How the changes of the worker-client relationship affect the recovery process of clients is the concern of this paper. The practical experience gained from the integrated community center for mental wellness (ICCMW) will be used as the illustration in clarifying it.