Vulnerable Families as Active Agents of Their

Own Change Process: A Bidirectional Perspective

Esther C. L. Goh
The literature on successful practice with vulnerable families reports social workers efforts in
forging therapeutic bonds with clients, their ability to both recognize clients strengths and
pain and support them as they work through adversity. Vulnerable families own contributions to their change process, however, have remained largely opaque. This article offers concrete conceptual tools to consider both social workers and clients from vulnerable families as
active agents in the change process. Empirical evidence collected by practitioner-researchers
through in-depth discussions with 10 vulnerable families illustrates clients agentic capacities
for autonomy, construction, and action as well as joint construction and maintenance of the
helping relationships with social workers, thereby illustrating their active contribution to the
process of change.
KEY WORDS:

bidirectionality; change process; clients agency; relationship as contexts

he challenges social workers face in working with vulnerable families have been well
documented by scholars and practitioners
(Krumer-Nevo, 2003a; Krumer-Nevo, SlonimNevo, & Hirshenzon-Segev, 2006; Morris, 2013;
Sousa, Ribeiro, & Rodrigues, 2007). The characteristics commonly cited by different studies are
that these families are underorganized, lacking in
boundaries (Aponte, 1994), and inadequate in social functioning. Although there is no agreement
among researchers on the reason for the failure of
interventions with families in distress, recent studies
have begun to capture success stories (KrumerNevo, 1998, 2003a; Ribner & Knei-Paz, 2002).
Rosenfeld (1997), in particular, proposed the benets of learning from successful interventions so
that existing patterns of practice by the profession
can be changed to t the families in distress.
The common threads running across the literature of these success stories are social workers effort
in forging therapeutic bonds with vulnerable families
(Knei-Paz, 2009); clients perception that their
social workers recognize the deep extent of their
pain and are prepared to stand by them (Ribner &
Knei-Paz, 2002); social workers being caring, exible, and less rigid about maintaining professional
boundaries (De Boer & Coady, 2007; Hopps, Pinderhughes, & Shankar, 1995); and social workers
ability to recognize both the strengths and the suffering of chronically distressed clients (Sousa et al.,
2007). Building on the scholarship of these success

doi: 10.1093/sw/swv002

2015 National Association of Social Workers

stories, we introduce the constructs of bidirectional

relationship context, and the ontological assumption of social workers and clients as equal agents,
as conceptual tools for understanding the process of
successful change. It is thus the goal of this article to
introduce these constructs to capture the processes
whereby clients from vulnerable families participate
in the change process as active agents together with
input from their social workers.
EXTANT SUCCESS STORIES

It has long been recognized that the therapeutic

bond facilitates clients trust in social workers and
constitutes the emotional basis for meaningful
intervention with vulnerable families (Ribner &
Knei-Paz, 2002). The importance of the therapeutic bond is apparent in success stories, in which vulnerable families describe social workers as warm,
personal, real, caring and devoted toward them.
As a consequence, the clients experience a sense of
relief from the weight of their distress and report
positive changes in their self-image and their family
relationships (Knei-Paz, 2009, p. 186).
From the perspective of the social worker, the
purpose of the therapeutic bond is to act as a springboard for the creation of change in the lives of the
clients. Hence, the literature of these success stories
provides valuable insights for practitioners to adjust
their working styles to encourage receptivity by
vulnerable families (Krumer-Nevo, 2003b). The
implicit and unintended message of this literature,

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however, may give the impression that social workers

are the actors in creating the therapeutic bond while
clients passively benet from their efforts. Hence, the
clients are at best perceived as respondents to or
even recipients of strong therapeutic bonds.
Literature on success stories is in line with the
strengths perspective, which calls for social workers
deliberate attention to exploit strength in all clients,
even those in seemingly dire situations (Saleebey,
2013; Weick, Rapp, Sullivan, & Kisthardt, 1989).
Research has repeatedly noted that social workers
who successfully engage vulnerable families recognize both the suffering and strengths of their
chronically distressed clients. For instance, clients
strengths are reported to be found in their ght
for better housing, their commitment to improve
the situations of their children, their struggle with
abusive spouses (Krumer-Nevo, 2003b, p. 279).
Other strengths are found through post-hoc analysis
of clients abilities to overcome chronic distress,
including childhood abuse, perpetration of family
violence, and raising children with disabilities, thus
providing clues as to what they did and what others
might do to achieve positive outcomes (Rosenfeld
& Sykes, 1998). However, we believe the strengths
perspective, being an ontological standpoint, largely
remains on the abstract level and does not provide
sufcient conceptual tools to aid social workers in
identifying strengths so as to engage clients from
vulnerable families. This gap needs to be augmented with well-dened conceptual tools to empirically analyze clients sense of agency (Goh, 2013)
amid chronic distress.
BIDIRECTIONAL FRAMEWORKSOCIAL
WORKERS AND CLIENTS AS EQUAL AGENTS

The construct of agency, which is key in bilateral

perspectives of family dynamics, is drawn heavily
from the social relations theory (SRT) developed by Kuczynski and associates (Kuczynski, 2003;
Kuczynski & De Mol, in press; Kuczynski & Parkin,
2007). At the ontological level, SRT assumes universal agency, that is, all human beings are agents.
People are intentional, proactive, self-organizing,
self-regulating, and self-reecting organisms who actively contribute to their life circumstances (Kuczynski
& De Mol, in press). Analytically, agency can be divided into three dimensions: autonomy, construction,
and action. Autonomy is the motivational aspect of
agency for self-determination and self-preservation;
construction refers to the manifestation of human

146

agency in semiotic activity, that is, the capacity of

social workers and clients alike to interpret their interactions with the environment and each other and to
create new meanings from their experiences; and
action is the capacity of both social workers and
clients to intervene or refrain from intervening in
the environment, irrespective of their social power
(Kuczynski, 2003).
Although all human beings are agents, SRT proposes that they differ in the resources they have to
support their actions as agents (Kuczynski & De
Mol, in press). Hence, resource constitutes power.
Building on French and Ravens (1959) conception
of power resources, SRT proposes three types of
power resources: individual resources, relational
resources, and cultural resources. In this article,
we focus on the relational resources within the
helping relationship, where both contribute and
draw power resources to inuence each other in
the change process (Kuczynski & De Mol, in press).
Equal Agents in Relational Context

The social worker and the client not only are inuenced by the relational context of the helping relationship, but also build on this relationship through
their interactions as agents over time. According to
Hinde and Stevenson-Hinde (1987), as the partners
(social worker and client) accumulate a history of
interactions over time, their relationship evolves
and the emergent relationship subsequently becomes the new context for future interactions. Such
agentic actions are also bidirectional. Two most relevant constructs used to explore this bidirectionality
and the agentic actions of both social workers and
clients are (1) relationship construction and maintenance and (2) relationship as context for agency.
Relationship Construction and
Maintenance

As active agents in the relationship contexts, both

social workers and clients contribute toward the
construction and maintenance of the helping relationship. In construction, we refer to the goals, meanings, plans, and actions each partner brings into
building a relationship with the other, whereas
maintenance includes the effort invested by both
parties to start the relationship, keep it going, maintain it in a satisfactory condition, and repair it after
missteps by one or both partners (Dindia, 2003).
Relationship contexts can constrain or enable the
exercise of agency by partners. For instance, the

Social Work Volume 60, Number 2 April 2015

relationship context may constrain the agentic

actions or strategies of a partner because she or he
wants to maintain the positive relationship or avoid
damaging it. On the other hand, the relationship
context also incorporates enabling elements that
provide leeway or facilitate partners to exercise their
agency. Within the construct of enablement, the
client is viewed as the active agent who draws
resources from the relationship context to enable
her or his own behaviors. This article treats both
social workers and clients as agents and unpacks
the agentic actions of both social workers and clients in a parallel manner.
METHOD

Practitioners from a community-based family services center in the eastern region of Singapore
(referred to as Family Service Centre A [FSC-A])
conducted this action research under the mentorship
of a social work academic to examine their work
with vulnerable families so as to improve their services. Although there is existing Western and Israeli
social work literature on working with vulnerable
families, practitioners are cognizant that generalized
solutions must be modied and adapted to t the
context in which they are used. Social work in
Singapore is very much inuenced by the socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs of its over
5 million population, of whom about 74.2 percent
have an ethnic Chinese background, 13.3 percent are
Malays, 9.1 percent Indians, and 3.3 percent belong
to other ethnic groups (Singapore Department of
Statistics, 2013). Social policies and services are
always conceptualized from a multicultural perspective sensitive to different worldviews associated
with a variety of belief systems and cultures (Ow,
1999). Every social services agency has an opendoor policy and will accept help-seekers regardless
of race or religion (Ow, 1999).
The vulnerable families served by FSC-A were
observed to be characterized by nancial strain due
to low skills, unemployment, and low income ( per
capita monthly income less than US $354), and high
stress due to challenges of blending children from
previous unions into current households. In preparation for the research, a case conference was held
between the academic mentor and the social work
team to identify vulnerable families from the agencys
caseload who tted these characteristics. Eighteen
families were identied; eight families were either
unreachable or declined to participate and 10 agreed

to take part in this study (eight women, two men).

Consistent with the general prole of service users
in Singapore, where Malay families are overrepresented among nancial assistance recipients (Han
& Rothwell, 2011), six of these 10 families were
Malay, three were Chinese, and one was Indian.
To access the agentic qualities of vulnerable families and the meanings they accorded to their own
change process, the methodological choice was to
conduct in-depth interviews in the clients natural
environment to build rapport and enable clients
to feel at ease. In the present study the setting of
the interviews was the clients homes, which generally consisted of two-room rental public ats (apartments). To avoid social desirability bias, we ensured
that the interviewers were social workers from the
team but not the social workers in charge of these
clients. The clients were asked to rate the level of
satisfaction with the services and care received from
social workers on a scale of one to six, with six being
very satised. Because this was a qualitative inquiry,
the numeric answer given by the clients served as a
means for the interviewers to probe for their indepth narratives of the nature of their relationships
with their social workers, and the quality of help
they had received. The clients were also asked about
their own response to their social workers efforts,
or the lack thereof. By close reading of the transcripts of the in-depth interviews numerous times,
we sought to distill the narratives of the clients
views of their social workers and of themselves to
access the nature of the bidirectional inuence
within the clientsocial worker relationship. The
analytical process involved categorizing and coding
units of meaning within the data and organizing
them into categories that typied the experience
and perspective of participants (Stringer, 2007).
Peer debrieng was used as a verication strategy
to increase the trustworthiness of the project; this
was achieved by inviting four social workers within
the team who were not involved in the data collection and analysis process to extensively discuss the
ndings and help the practitioner-researchers detect
whether their personal perspectives and values might
have affected the ndings (Guba & Lincoln, 1989).
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Analysis of the clients narratives showed that they

recognized the social workers efforts to form strong
and meaningful helping relationships with them.
Nevertheless, clients also alluded to their own

Goh / Vulnerable Families as Active Agents of Their Own Change Process

147

part in the change process. Salient ndings included

the clients accounts of how the relationships they
had with their social workers prevented them
from pursuing harmful habits, or facilitated their
taking positive actions on behalf of their families.
Clients Considered Social Workers as
Family and Intimate

It was interesting to note that three participants

described their social workers as family, my
backbone, and very accessible. These descriptors seemed to cross the traditional perceptions of
professional relationships. Client (D4) said, I told
my mother, Ma, this social worker is not like social
worker you know. Its really like family member.
The male client (H8) who considered his social
worker his backbone explained that the social
worker had helped him all the way . . . whatever
I cant [handle], shes willing to look into it in an
open [nonjudgmental] way! Another participants
narrative (I9) suggested evidence of a two-way process when her social worker called to check on her.
She then took the initiative to call the social worker
too. This mutual accessibility seemed to bring
about a strong relationship in the dyad:
I think I like her [social worker] in that way
[chuckles]. Shes a social worker that calls me
and asks me, Are you ok? She will give me
a call, or I give her a call saying about my problem. Then shell quickly get me an appointment to see her face-to-face to talk, rather
than talking on the phone.

It can be seen from this narrative that client considered her relationship with the social worker as
intimatefamily, and not a social worker, and
expressed her liking for the worker. The relationship between the client and the social worker was
perceived as mutually co-constructed in such a way
that each had a part to play in making the change
process work, and each scaffolded the others efforts.
Although these ndings were consistent with
previous literature that found that successful interventions with vulnerable families are characterized by clients positive perceptions of their social
workers (Knei-Paz, 2009), in this study clients (construction) agency was made explicit in the way they
accorded their social workers the privileged position
of family, backbone, and being liked. Such descriptors reected their perceived intimate and

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strong relationships with their social workers. This

highlighting of the clients role in interpreting the
relationships challenges the conventional interpretation by which social workers are seen to use the
therapeutic relationship as a springboard for the
creation of change in the lives of the clients (KneiPaz, 2009, p. 187). Evidence from this study showed
this notion to be only half the story; the other half is
that clients were neither merely beneciaries of the
therapeutic relationship nor simply the changed outcomes created by social workers. To bring the active
and agentic roles played by clients to the foreground,
we used parallel constructs of agency to examine contributions by both the social workers and the clients.
Clients Perceptions of Social Workers
Contributions to the Relationships

As the participants in this study were from vulnerable families, it was no surprise that they had sought
help from multiple social services, either sequentially or concurrently. Although the interviewers
did not prompt the participants to compare different service providers, many of them did compare
and contrast their experiences on their own accord.
Two themes emerged, reecting the clients perceptions of how their experience of positive relationships with their current social workers differed
from their previous relationships with other service
providers. These themes were (a) social workers
meeting their wants and (b) social workers commitment and competence in helping.
Social Workers Meeting Clients Wants. These
low-income blended families had many unmet
basic needs. However, it is worth noting that the
clients appreciated their social workers willingness
to hear their deeper yearnings and wants. One client (F6) said,
She [social worker] talked to me, Okay, what
is your favorite? A guitar? [So] she tried to get a
guitar for me . . . from there I cut down [on
drinking], but I still drink [sometimes], because
of pressure, you know, the family.

Another client (E5) claimed that her social

worker would agree to anything she raised concerning her childrens needs, or even their wants.
To me I feel this place (FSC-A) is satisfying. I
have no television in my house and the children
wanted to watch cartoons, the social worker

Social Work Volume 60, Number 2 April 2015

would ask her friends to donate. So whatever I

asked for, she agrees with it. She feels for my
children so much, she would ask anyone for
donation. Like I said, my social worker really
has helped me a lot.

The social worker did not focus only on meeting

the basic needs but also on the wants of the clients. This contributed to the clients perceptions
that they were being heard and that they mattered
to the social worker, thus constructing a personal
dimension to what could have remained a merely
professional or institutional relationship.
Social Workers Commitment and Competence
in Helping. The terms full support and very
helpful repeatedly appeared in many transcripts of
the clients describing their social workers. One client (H8) remarked, [I give her full score] because
[she] really makes things work, lets say I see her
today, about two weeks later or one month later,
things can happen. The client had faith in his social
workers commitment in helping him and was condent that progress would be attained within a reasonable time frame. A sense of urgency was critical
in constructing a close working relationship with
these vulnerable families, because their issues concerned immediate basic needs such as the risk of
being evicted by housing authorities due to rent
arrears, or having their electricity and water cut
off due to unpaid bills. In addition to the social
workers ability to make things work in crisis situations, there was the perceived commitment to
look out for the client, thus communicating that
they cared about clients welfare beyond a perfunctory provision of services.
She [the social worker] really showed concern
[in helping]. What people have donated [in kind],
she would call [to tell me]. Other social workers
[from other agencies] do not call me. What we
[clients family] need, they [the social workers
from another agency] will give to certain people.

This shows that clients were attentive to and

interpreted the social workers efforts as meaning
something beyond the direct provision of services.
The social workers interest in clients lives and perceived genuine commitment to nding ways to
meet their needs indirectly communicated to the
clients that there was a personal dimension to the
clients relationship with their social workers.

Clients Own Perceived Contributions. Despite

having been in a prolonged period of nancial strain
and family stress, many of the clients had clear goals
of attaining nancial self-sufciency and strove
toward eventually not having to rely on social services. A single mother with three young children
from two previous relationships, who was starting
a new one, told her social worker:
[If ] I depend on you [social services agency] I
will become a burden. But I want to stand on
my own feet. My character is such. Im a
mother, I want to work, I dont want to stay
home, I dont want to be lazy. Sometimes I
feel very tired because I got three kids to take
care, I got rent and bills to pay. I cant just
rely on my boyfriend, because hes just a boyfriend. Lets say one day he had enough of me
he may just break up. (I9)

The determination of the clients to overcome

their nancial problems was an active component
in the construction of the bidirectional helping relationships with their social workers. Another client
explicitly stated that both the clients effort and
the social workers support jointly made the helping relationship work in a complementary manner
and moved them toward achieving their goals:
I am not condent to say that my family is strong
and can stand rm. But I think without support
[from the social worker], I dont think we can
make it. I know I cannot depend on these [social
services] supports in the long term, so I will try to
work and well see how it goes. (E5)

Disconrming Findings. Careful analysis of data

revealed that two clients (A1 and B2), whose daughters were removed by the child protection ofcer
because their new boyfriends were deemed to be
risk factors for the young girls, did not consider services provided by the FSC-A as particularly helpful.
Although participant B2 had a positive impression
of the social worker from FSC-A, both tended to
transfer their antagonism toward child protection
agencies onto social service providers in general.
Unilateral effort on the part of the social workers
alone cannot build close relationships if the clients
reject their efforts.
DiscussionJoint Construction of Therapeutic
Bonds. The social workers in this study did not

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149

focus only on meeting the basic needs of the clients,

but also attended to their wants. This strategy has
been found to be effective in validating the clients
dreams and aspirations (Krumer-Nevo, 2003b).
The clients perceived that they were not treated
merely as cases but as individuals who mattered to
the social worker. The social workers commitment
in helping and their competence in getting things
done were seen to be important in fostering strong
bonds with their clients. On the other hand, clients
were also agentic in having their own clear goals
of eventually becoming nancially independent.
These goals motivated them to seek help and to
participate actively in the helping relationship. In
the minds of the clients, they did not want to be
long-term burdens to the social services organization. These clients engaged themselves with the
social workers because they knew they needed
the support. But in the long run, they planned to
secure employment and become independent.
Sustained Relationships

The duration of active intervention of FSC-A with

these 10 families ranged between two to 10 years,
with a mean of 5.14 years. Hence, sustaining a
long-term relationship was key to effective help.
Most clients reported that the social workers
knew them intimately, had listened to them with
care, and had persisted in reaching out to them
even when they avoided contact. These clients
also expressed their desire to repay their social
workers for their kindness and sought to advance
the relationship by disclosing everything to the
social worker. Both were partners in a long-term
relationship and were actively engaged in maintaining the relationship.
Social Workers Contributions to Long-term
Relationship. The client who considered the social
worker as his backbone claimed that the worker
had an accurate knowledge of him: She knows
when to push and when not to push me. She also
knows when I can do it and where my weaknesses
lie. So I would say she is 99 percent accurate. The
clients also expressed that they felt cared for by the
social workers because they had always kept in
touch.
She [the social worker] really cares. She wants to
get updated about my family and know what I
have been through. There was once I tried to
cope with what I have and did not call her for

150

two months. But she was very nice. She called

me and checked how I was doing and informed
me that the application for nancial assistance to
MUIS [Islamic Religious Council of Singapore] was rejected but offered to write to the
Member of Parliament on my behalf. (H8)

Such efforts on the social workers part to keep in

close contact and to continue to act on the clients
behalf contributed to maintaining a satisfying and
cooperative relationship. The clients said that they
felt the social workers never forget them.
One vivid account of a social workers effort in
maintaining the relationship was related by a client
who had been incarcerated for drug consumption:
Another thing is that she doesnt look down
on me or scold me, because at that point I was
in prison, because of my misuse of drugs, so
when I came out I thought I didnt want to see
her, because I felt shy . . . I felt very bad about
this. Because she [social worker] is very good to
me, yet I do this you know. So when I was
released, my mum said that Your social worker
was looking for you. So I gave her a call, she
[social worker] said, Where have you been?
I said, Do you really want to see me? She
said, Everybody makes mistakes, so you learn
from the mistake. So from there onwards, I
can see that she is a social worker who really
goes all out for me. (I9)

If the social worker had not proactively reached

out to repair the distancing relationship, the client
could have drifted away out of guilt. Not only did
the client respond very positively to the maintenance effort of the social worker, but her trust in
the social worker also deepened, and that further
solidied the relationship.
Clients Contributions to the Long-term Relationship with Social Workers. It was clear that clients were not content to be on the receiving end of
help. They played their part in sustaining and maintaining the relationship. For instance, one client felt
indebted to her social worker and desired to do
something in return.
My idea is, since Rosy [ pseudonym of social
worker] has helped me a lot, sometimes I
wanted to help her back but . . . After Rosy

Social Work Volume 60, Number 2 April 2015

gave birth, I wanted to buy clothes for her baby

but I dont have enough money and that makes
me feel sad. (E5)

Although the social worker did not expect and

would not have accepted gifts from the client, the
transcript showed the clients desire to reciprocate
in the relationship with the social worker in some
way. This also reects the clients perception of a
less hierarchical and a more personal and reciprocal
relationship with her social worker.
This client further elaborated her unreserved
disclosure of herself, which made the relationship
with her social worker intimate and meaningful:

ndings in this study suggest a third process of

changethat is, once a therapeutic relationship has
been established, the relationship itself forms a context that constrains undesirable actions and enables
constructive actions by the client.
Context That Constrains Clients Undesirable
Actions. Client (I9) recalled her relationship with
her social worker when she was serving her jail term
for drug abuse. The sense of embarrassment at having disappointed her social worker, together with
guilt for having put her children through the experience, constrained her from subsequently choosing
to return to drugs:
When I was in the prison, I thought a lot, I was
thinking back, oh shit, I give Sally [not the social workers real name] a very big problem. So I
was [thinking to myself ], when I [get] released
how am I going to face her, you know. I was
thinking how would I explain? [Now] I wont
even be thinking of going back to drug use,
because I already wasted my life for one year
inside, and my kids were like going haywire
without me. I say no [to drugs] this time around,
no means no.

Yes, she [social worker] helped me a lot. Actually I didnt want to share with her because I
pity her [client showed empathy toward social
worker]. This is my problem, not hers. But I
have no one else to talk to. Whatever problems
I faced, I like telling them to her. I share all my
ups and downs with her. I never keep anything
to myself because it gives me headache. So I
told her everything. (E5)

DiscussionJoint Maintenance of Therapeutic

Bonds. Clients perceived that their social workers
worked to maintain the therapeutic relationships in
a satisfactory state. For example, their social workers
kept closely in touch with them and took proactive
steps to repair distancing relationships or contact
them when they were drifting away. The clients
also contributed to maintaining and even advancing
the relationships by wanting to reciprocate the help
they had received from the social worker. Conventionally, social workers are trained to observe clear
professional boundaries, and such reciprocity from
clients is not traditionally acceptable (Alexander &
Charles, 2009). Although it is outside the scope of
this article to discuss such ethical issues, the social
workers sensitive and thoughtful handling of such
relationship-maintaining efforts from the clients
was crucial. It was important that they did not simply dismiss their clients gestures of reciprocation.
Relationship as Context for Change

Previous research has emphasized two general processes for instigating change: (1) positive impact is
brought about by the social workers direct actions,
and (2) social workers create and use therapeutic
bonds to facilitate interventions indirectly. The

The client reected that her bad choice in abusing drugs had not only resulted in her jail term, but
also caused a sense of betrayal to her social worker
who had put in so much effort to help her. This
sense of guilt toward her social worker and toward
her children acted as a restraining force to keep her
from the temptation of drugs, and she felt she could
stand rm in rejecting drugs as an option.
Context That Empowers Constructive Actions. D
(H8), who was in his third relationship, had an
infant with his current partner. His adolescent son
from a previous relationship resided with them, and
they formed a blended household. Because D was
unable to hold down a job for long, he had incurred
huge utility and rent arrears, and was referred to
several social services agencies for arrears management. D contrasted his experience with a previous
social worker and his current social worker. His
previous social worker [from a different social services agency] kept pushing him to clear his arrears,
and the relationship became intensely frustrating for
him. His current social worker acknowledged his
effort in taking steps to address his arrears in a slow
but steady manner. He felt that his relationship with
her motivated him to keep to his commitment to

Goh / Vulnerable Families as Active Agents of Their Own Change Process

151

clear his arrears, even when the social worker was

on long maternity leave:
I dont want to hold [due payment] too long.
Because I want my Rosy Tan [ pseudonym of
social worker], when she comes back [from
maternity leave] at least, I got something to
show [her]. I do not want to make her feel disappointed or feel that I have failed her, because
I gave my words to her.

Notice that the client referred to his social

worker as my Rosy Tan. This was an affectionate
term that alluded to a sense of a personal relationship that D treasured, versus a distant and cold professional one. This relationship motivated him to
keep to his word on arrears repayment even when
his social worker was away on maternity leave. He
wanted to show her when she returned to work
that he was committed to solving his problem.
This relationship was indeed a strong empowering
force.
Another client took courage from her social
workers encouragement and began to believe in
her own ability to be strong:
She [social worker] always gives me a positive
way of thinking, Dont ever look down on
yourself, do whatever you can do, because
she said that among a lot of clients [that she
has worked with], Im the best, because Im a
single mother yet very strong. So she [social
worker] was quite proud [of me], because she
knows that Im the type of person that if I
need help, I [will] just go and dont wait for
the help to come to me.

This was a clear illustration that the relationship

with her social worker constituted a context that
enabled her to behave like an agentic being in pursuing her goals. The desire to protect the relationship constrained the client from destructive actions,
and the desire to live up to the positive image that
the social worker had of the client enabled her to be
self-reliant and seek help as needed.
Disconrming Findings. Client (A1) did not
report a close relationship with the social worker
from FSC-A and thus did not think she received
any concrete help. She believed her boyfriend
was more helpful to her (although he was suspected
by child protection of sexually harassing her elder

152

daughter). She claimed he was the one who took

her to apply for nancial aid from a government
agency, rather than the social worker.
DiscussionTreating Relationship Context as
Resource. What is less explored in existing literature
is that the relationship between social workers and
vulnerable families is a resource that supports the
clients effectiveness as agents acting on their own
behalf and the social workers effectiveness as agents
acting on behalf of their clients. As a social worker
and his or her client accumulate a history of interactions, this further contributes to the formation of
an emerging therapeutic relationship that has
personal signicance. Over time, this relationship,
if positive, becomes a new context for constructive
interactions in the future (Hinde & StevensonHinde, 1987). Relational resources (Kuczynski,
2003) embedded within the relationship context
are a source of power that supports the relationship
partners ability to inuence each other. For the
social worker the relationship inuences the client
to be receptive to their efforts. For the client the
relationship with the social worker is a source of
support that enables the clients agency. As an active
agent of his own life, D accorded much value to the
trusting relationship he had with his social worker.
This relationship motivated and enabled him to
take positive measures toward solving his arrears
problems. On the other hand, the relational context
constrained the single mother. She was constrained
from returning to drugs because she did not want to
disappoint her social worker, who she deemed
cared deeply for her. She also did not want to disappoint her children, another relationship that
potentially serves as a source of constraint and as a
resource. The construct of resources embedded in
relationship contexts has thus been helpful in surfacing clients agency and their actions as active
agents.
IMPLICATIONS

Informed by the bidirectional framework that

considers both social workers and clients as active
agents, this article reports ndings stemming from
in-depth interviews with vulnerable families, which
underscore the fact that clients are both beneciaries
and contributors to the therapeutic relationship. Also,
beyond therapeutic relationships, the contexts of
relationships that clients and social workers constructed and maintained over a sustained period of
time both constrained and enabled the change

Social Work Volume 60, Number 2 April 2015

process. These discussions engender two implications for practice. First, agentic lenses provide constructs to identify clients strengths. This is especially
relevant in working with vulnerable families because, despite being characterized as low-income,
underorganized, lacking boundaries, and chaotic
in functioning, these families are active agents. Second, social workers attention should be directed to
strengths within the relationship contexts between
themselves and clients.
Constructs to Identify Strengths in Clients
and Client Systems

Although strengths can be found in different levels

of the ecological system, we believe the agentic
constructs discussed here are most useful in identifying strengths within the client and in client systems.
To use a strengths perspective in working with clients
from vulnerable families is to explicitly acknowledge clients as active agents and not passive recipients of help. To access their strengths in the three
dimensions of agency, namely autonomy, cognitive
construction, and action, we directed our attention
to the vulnerable families goals in striving for autonomy and self-preservation, their abilities and methods in making meaning of phenomena around
them (for example, the meaning they constructed
cognitively in taking a risk with a new social worker), as well as the actions and strategies they used to
achieve desired goals (for example, clients decision
to open his heart to the new social worker). When
we draw our attention to these three domains
where the families strengths may possibly lie, we
will be sensitized to how their strengths are exercised. Then we can adjust our intervention plans
to plug into the clients unique natural adaptive
systems.
Constructs to Identify Strengths in Social
WorkerClient Relationship Contexts

Another source of strengths lies in the bidirectional

relationship contexts between the social worker and
the client. Krumer-Nevo (2003a) found a negative
bidirectionality between social workers and families
in distress and poverty, where each partys negativity begat further negative energy from the other,
and this resulted in a coalition of despair. The
bidirectionality between the social worker and the
client, demonstrated by the evidence of this article,
does not have to be negative. Instead, it can be a
source of strength, where positive energy begets

more positive responses in turn from both parties,

as our ndings have alluded to. By paying close
attention to the efforts of clients in constructing
and maintaining relationships with their social
workers, as well as to the clients positive responses
to their social workers efforts, clues can be found as
to where strengths lie.
CONCLUSION

The state of ongoing crisis that plagues many vulnerable families can overwhelm social workers
and blind them to strengths hidden in their clients.
Furthermore, compassion fatigue and burnout may
creep in if social workers are discouraged by the lack
of progress in these families despite effort invested
in helping. To avoid such pitfalls, this article demonstrates the benet of an expanded view of the
change process. The concrete concept tools offered
here direct social workers attention beyond their
own effort to the nuanced agentic capacitites of
the vulnerable families in forging collaborative relationships with the social workers and unveil the
potential power that lies in relationship resources
as well as relationship contexts that clients can tap
to ignite their own strengths. Keeping the dual
foci of social worker and client as equal agents in
the change process paves the way for an authentic
partnership in practice.
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Arts Link, Singapore, 117570; e-mail: swkegcl@nus.edu.sg.

The author would like to thank Mark Lin and Francesca Seah
for data collection and coding the transcripts. Special thanks go to
the participants of this study who taught us that they are agentic
clients. Leon Kuczynski and Jan De Mol provided invaluable
input to the initial drafts of this article.
Original manuscript received January 15, 2014
Final revision received August 10, 2014
Accepted September 2, 2014
Advance Access Publication January 23, 2015

Esther C. L. Goh, PhD, is associate professor, Department of

Social Work, National University of Singapore, AS3 level 4, 3

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