Strengths Institute

Vision

To ensure that strengths-based, resilience and health-oriented concepts, ideals, values, and practices imbue all approaches to helping individuals, families, and communities, within and beyond social work.

Mission

• To provide the environment, resources, perspective, and language to educate practitioners, students, and faculty about the strengths model;
• To disseminate strengths ideas and practices widely;
• To encourage the incorporation of strengths concepts and methods in classroom, agency, and conference room, stimulating research. To provide support and direction to those educators, practitioners and administrators interested in bringing the strengths approach to their work.

Goals

1. To gather those resources (books, journal articles, monographs, syllabi, agency policies, dissertations, student papers) that reflect the complexity and variety of the strengths perspective and strengths-oriented approaches and to make them available to interested students, practitioners, and educators around the country and internationally.
2. To provide education in the strengths approaches for those who are interested through: classroom lectures and discussions; consultation with educators; mentoring students interested in doing papers and presentations that involve some strengths oriented thinking and doing; serving on dissertation committees or acting as an informal advisor where strengths is a central part of the conceptual base; doing presentations and providing consultation for agencies wanting to instill a more strengths oriented practice; providing model syllabi that are strengths focused for all the foundation areas—practice, organization and community, research, HBSE.
3. To develop a course on strengths-based practice with individuals, families, and communities. Ultimately this could be provided as an elective. With further development, this might become three different courses.
4. To provide consultation on curriculum development for those institutions desiring to reflect or to enhance strengths-based pedagogy.
5. To build a national and international network of individuals, agencies, and institutions dedicated to providing and promoting strengths-based instruction, inquiry, and practice.
6. To create a strengths handbook or dictionary for practitioners, students, and educators.
7. To encourage and help organize national and international conferences and seminars focused on strengths-based practice and education. 

Quote

“Every contact with a person can be an opportunity for building hope, increasing confidence, and taking steps to create a better life.”

Charles Rapp and Richard Goscha
The Strengths Model