Assessing client strengths: clinical assessment for client empowerment

The proposition that client strengths are central to the helping relationship is simple enough and seems uncontroversial as an important component of practice. Yet deficit, disease, and dysfunction metaphors are deeply rooted in clinical social work, and the emphasis of assessment has continued to be diagnosing abnormal and pathological conditions. This article argues that assessment in clinical practice, among other things, is a political activity. Assessment that focuses on deficits provides obstacles to client exercise of personal and social power and reinforces those social structures that generate and regulate unequal power relationships that victimize clients. Clinical practice based on metaphors of client strengths is also political in that it is congruent with the potential for client empowerment. This article discusses the importance of a client strengths perspective for assessment and proposes 12 practice guidelines that foster a strengths perspective.