STRENGTHS

A focus on strengths, whether strengths-based assessment, planning or practice, has been around in social work for a while and many would now consider it to be a central tenet of contemporary practice with children and families. Strengths, as protective factors, are also a crucial aspect of resilience. 

 However, I would argue that our thinking on strengths and children in OOHC has not kept pace with wider developments in strengths-based psychology and neuroscience.  As such, and given legal and organisational constraints and the crisis-driven nature of much of the work, we still pay significantly more attention to risks, vulnerabilities and deficits, than we do to harnessing strengths.

 Some care experienced people that I have known or met have developed, however framed, incredible strengths and capabilities. While all different, top of mind are resilience, self-awareness, determination, self-advocacy and interpersonal communication. I would contend that every child and young person has strengths and that as long as we or others have a positive relationship with them, with some effort they’ll be uncovered. However, far too often the strengths of those in OOHC have developed as a reaction to poor rather than high quality care i.e. as a survival technique.

 In 1999, the late educational psychologist Donald Clifton created the Gallup online assessment tool Clifton StrengthsFinder (now known as CliftonStrengths) that focuses on 34 themes that make up the user's personality. He also co-authored the 2001 book Now, Discover Your Strengths with Marcus Buckingham offering advice on determining employees' strengths and using those qualities for success at work. I still have and use my copy from 2005 which was given to me by my first mentor. 

 In 2007, the book was updated by Tom Rath and called StrengthsFinder 2.0, and is among Amazon’s bestselling books of all-time. In 2002, the American Psychological Association honoured Clifton with a lifetime achievement award as "the father of strengths-based psychology and the grandfather of positive psychology".

 While not wanting to conflate those in OOHC and care leavers with employees, I do believe that on this issue there is significant potential to meaningfully learn here from the business world (also, most on OOHC will in time want to become employees and need to develop related employability skills as they are prepared for leaving care). Here’s four reasons for you to take the assessment if you haven’t already done so:

Firstly, many of us do not know what our strengths actually are. Understanding these allow us to put ourselves in situations where we are more likely to thrive and excel. The assessment ranks your top 5 or all 34 of 34 (getting all 34 is the more useful if more expensive option). The odds of someone having exactly the same top five as you (in the same order) is apparently an incredible 1 in 33 million! 

Secondly, strengths can be further developed and building on existing strengths is significantly more effective than solely focusing on deficits.

Thirdly, we can re-evaluate and harness some of the traits that others, whether a boss, colleague, partner or parent, have seen in us as a negative or even a character flaw! This is much more than linguistics and the use of affirmative language, and can be very liberating. 

Fourthly, and here is where the power of this assessment can be fully realised is that, you can use your strengths to compensate for some of your weaknesses. The 34 strengths are grouped across four domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking. So if you want to perform better in one of these four domains, you will almost certainly already have some strengths in each that you can actually build upon. With some work, your performance will improve but in ways that are better suited to you.

In better understanding, valuing and developing your own strengths, you’ll be better placed to then directly and indirectly help develop the strengths of those in OOHC and care leavers. 

If you’d like to know more about this assessment go to: https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/252137/home.aspx?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=New_Zealand_CS&utm_content=strengthfinder&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoO6q3t6j7gIVUVtgCh0BbA-qEAAYASAAEgKtovD_BwE

I’d love to hear your thoughts! You can email me at: iain@betteroutcomes.co.nz

Kia kaha (Stay Strong).

Iain