The collaborative professional: towards empowering vulnerable families

Abstract

This article describes the authors' journey in an attempt to understand why considerable efforts of professionals working with vulnerable families are not compensated by better results. The authors propose guidelines to support professionals to develop a collaborative approach, which would empower them as well as the families they work with. The guidelines focus on the front-line professionals, whose main tasks include (i) promoting their own resilience (and of other professionals involved) through reflection and supervision; (ii) building up a trusting relationship with families, which can be achieved by being flexible and informal, providing instrumental support, using time in active, extensive and intensive ways and (iii) promoting and reinforcing small positive family achievements during the course of the intervention. The proposal poses a challenge to professionals' actions and expertise as well as to agencies, being simultaneously a response to their aspirations to do better.

Keywords:

• vulnerable families
• social intervention
• professionals
• collaborative approach

Notes