The Extent and Correlates of the Utilisation of Empowerment Strategies:Survey on Social Workers in the Field of Partner Violence

Abstract

Empowerment has been treated as an intervening goal in many areas of social work practices to strengthen clients so they could break through the status of disadvantage and, in turn, increase social functioning and quality of life. Due to the importance of empowerment in social work practice, the purposes of this study were to examine the extent of utilisation of empowerment strategies and to explore its correlates. A survey was conducted on social workers in the field of partner violence and resulted in 243 valid samples. The findings showed that social workers used the individual level (at the psychological level) of strategies more than the interpersonal or social political levels. After taking other variables into account, the significant correlates of the utilisation of empowerment strategies were: life satisfaction, the control tendency of the perpetrator, level of service provision, and percentage of two to three contacts per month. The findings imply that empowerment is a mutually beneficial process between social workers and clients; empowerment is still based on needs of clients; and more services and more frequent contacts made by social workers increase the possibility of enacting empowerment strategies.