Helena Neves Almeida

Assessing ‘empowerment’ as social development: goal and process

ABSTRACT Empowerment is a concept widely used in several policy documents and is presented, in social work and social care professional universes, as an operative process to reduce vulnerability and to increase the power, or capabilities, of individuals and groups to make choices and to transform these into actions and results. However, to move beyond rhetoric and paternalistic practices, we need to understand what empowerment really means and implies in different contexts, and especially, how to evaluate what has changed (outcomes) or is changing (processes), both on an individual and a collective level.

Unemployment: transitions experiences

Work appears as an important determinant in psychological health and well-being (Blustein, 2008). However, the current structure of the labor market is complex, unpredictable and unstable, making it necessary to rethink the meaning of work in human existence. This article focuses on the different types of transitions (voluntary vs. involuntary) as well on the different reactions to unemployment, and presents some intervention strategies in the context of career counseling, conceived as a (possible) response to changes in employment.

Arts, Creativity and Social Intervention in the School Environment. Connections and Critical Refections

The article reflects on the importance of valuing the informal and formal knowledge (school), and focuses on an education model that respects and encourages the participation and empowers the knowledge brought by the student. In collective work, the exercise of understanding the discipline of arts, as a sponsor of production and reflection, can stimulate the development of creative and critical people. This reflection attempts to make a connection between the increase in the number of social projects in arts and culture, the social emergence of the creation of policies that will combat social inequality and the real role of art in enhancing creativity.

Sobrecarga dos cuidadores familiares de pessoas com doença mental: dimensões analítico-reflexivas na perspectiva do Serviço Social

From a conceptual and documentary analysis about mental health and their implications on deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care, this article does a literature review about the factors of the analytical concept of burden of family caregivers, which serves the basic understanding of the phenomena and of the two family intervention models presented here: the model of Twigg and Atkin: focused on the problem and arguing on a expansion of the concept of caregiver in the perspective of the professional intervention; and Salleebey model: that focuses on the strengths and opportunities of persons involved in a dialectical process in which fall mediation, advocacy and empowerment. Being a field of multidisciplinary intervention, the mental health area is viewed by the practice of social worker profession, focusing on some of the theoretical, ethical and political dimensions.