In this blog, Phil Wilshire, Principal Social Worker for Avon and Wiltshire NHS Partnership Trust, shares how the new Power Threat Meaning Framework aligns with and can impact the field of social work.
“Social workers will be interested in the way interpersonal, economic and ideological expressions of power control language and agendas to impose meanings. They will also be interested in the way the model reconnects social context and ‘threat responses,’ or ‘symptoms’ as they are usually caused, and the way in which this promotes the need for social action and supports a new kind of preventative social policy response.
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From a mental health social work perspective the framework is likely to be entirely uncontroversial. I have spoken to many social workers and so far their response has been entirely positive. Our professional training encourages us to understand people holistically within their social context. This framework supports this approach by firmly and fully reconnecting personal experience and social context with mental distress and troubling behaviour.”
