Every thing, big or small, that the person can learn to do for themselves is empowering.

When you use empowerment approaches, you avoid doing something for a person that they could try or learn to do themselves. Instead, it involves teaching or providing a ‘leg up’ so that the person can do the thing, or part of the thing, for themselves.

It could be explained by the age-old saying:

Of course, all of the people you support will have different abilities and levels of independence. They will also have different personality styles, confidence levels and past experiences that allow them to be either more or less able to speak up against unfair treatment and to fulfil their own dreams.

Because of this, you might find that you need to use different approaches, different levels and different techniques to help empower a person.

Empowerment versus disempowerment

Empowerment is the process of gaining strength and confidence to voice one’s own opinion, or simply, to give someone power.

Disempowerment is the process of reducing the power or control that a person has to direct or make choices about their own lives.

Image by Ocskay Mark, Shutterstock, Shutterstock licence  

When a person has social, legal and political structures around them that allow them to have power or control over their own choices and to be able to direct their own lives, we say that they are empowered.

Traditionally, older people and people with disabilities have not had control over decisions made about them and have not been given the power to speak up about their rights or needs. They have frequently and continuously experienced the effects of negative assumptions and views about their abilities, capacities and what they can offer society. The result of these attitudes has been centuries of disempowerment.

 Select to learn more

Select each bar to expand and reveal some historical practices that have led to disempowerment.

Institutionalised care

A significant change in how older people and people with disabilities are supported is the transition from an institutionalised model of treatment to a person-centred model of support.

In the past, people with intellectual disabilities and mental illness were often placed in institutions, with limited control over their own lives.

In traditional care settings, the person was treated as though they are a child. It was assumed that older people and people with disabilities cannot make healthy, informed decisions for themselves. This led to people around them making decisions about them and not with them, even if the person was capable of learning to make their own decisions.

We are still far from being an inclusive and non-discriminatory society when it comes to ageing and disability. However, we are making progress in changing the structures and attitudes that disempowered people in the past. Most institutions for people with intellectual disabilities and mental illness were dismantled in the late 20th century. People who needed support were moved into the community, into homes that are as close as possible to the typical community life that most of us experience.

Principles and approaches

Today, in both disability and ageing support, we attempt to recognise the person as the expert in their own life, support them to make decisions and direct the supports and care they prefer. This is called a person-centred approach or self-directed support.

Term	Definition
Person-centred approach	Providing tailored support for each person and taking time to learn about their individual preferences, needs and goals.
Self-directed support	Support that is chosen by and controlled by the person themselves, rather than by the worker or service.

 Apply your skills

Here are some examples. Drag and drop to sort each into the correct category: historical institutionalised model or person-centred, self-directed support model that we now use. Select ‘Check’ to see if you are correct.

Approaches that encourage empowerment

There are still some issues and challenges for us. Aged care facilities have some things in common with institutional styles of care, such as segregation from the community, for example. People with disabilities are still more likely to find it harder to find employment and are more likely to experience poverty and discrimination than most other Australians.

For a variety of reasons, including stigma, stereotyping or past experiences, it can be difficult for a person to recognise their strengths and capacities. This may be because the focus has always been on their limitations or challenges, or because society in general has low expectations about what people with disability or older people can achieve.

However, we are slowly changing attitudes in ways that give back control over lives to the individuals whose life is being supported, rather than to the services and workers who support them. Person-centred approaches are used for support that recognise that the person is central to the decision-making that affects their life.

In our daily practice, we can empower older people by:

• giving them choices
• allowing them the freedom to choose or refuse
• allowing them to express their own identity
• not imposing your own values on them
• helping them to recognise the impacts of ageing on activities of living but assisting them to stay in control as much as possible.

As a support worker you will need to ensure that you are aware of and understand each person’s individualised plan.

 Select to learn more

Select each bar to expand and reveal further information about individualised plans.

As a support worker you will need to ensure that you understand the terms used in your organisation for these plans.

Strengths-based approach

Strengths are a person’s positive personal attributes, character traits or skills available to that person. Identifying strengths helps the person create a picture of the future and encourages them to make decisions about their support and to speak up for themselves and express their views. A strengths-based approach acknowledges the issues such as what they cannot do and turns the discussion back to the person’s strengths.

Strengths-based approach, or person-centred approach, focuses on ways of working that emphasises a person’s personal strengths as well as their social and community networks.

A person-led approach:

• supports the person to be involved in making decisions about their life
• embraces each person’s life experience, age, gender, culture, heritage, language, beliefs and identity
• requires support and flexibility to suit the person’s wishes and priorities
• acknowledges that people are the experts in their life with a focus on what they can do first, and any help they need second
• includes the person’s support networks as partners.

 Watch the video

Watch ‘What is a strengths-based approach?’ for a description of how a strengths-based approach underpins support and interventions used in the community services and support services.

Listen to the video and respond to the following questions:

• What are the benefits of a strengths-based approach?
• How does an outcome-focused approach provide for a better life for the person?

Active support

An active support approach involves the person being engaged and involved in their own support, thus empowering them to participate fully in all aspects of their lives.

In your role as a support worker, this means that you provide the correct amount of support the person needs so they can do things for themselves without someone doing it for them.

 Watch the video

Watch ‘Active Support – A day in Fran’s life’ where a support worker talks about how she provides support to her client with a disability but makes sure she does not do too much ‘for the person’.

Enablement vs reablement

Enablement is support that recognises and emphasises the persons’ capacity to have control over their health and life.

This type of support is known to restore independence by building on the person’s strengths and goals so they can have greater independence and, where possible, be less reliant on services. It is ‘doing with’ rather than ‘doing for’ the person.

Reablement is the process of supporting a person to regain some or all of their independence.

Reablement is a range of supports provided when a person needs short-term assistance from health professionals to adapt to their changed circumstances. For example, after an operation and hospital stay or after a deterioration in a condition and loss of some skills, a person may need to learn or re-learn certain skills to be able to do activities that are important to them.

The next section outlines some of the barriers and obstacles still in the way for people with disabilities and older people in society, and how we are progressing towards overcoming them.

Structural and systemic obstacles to empowerment

The way that society is set up can affect the person’s level of impairment more significantly than their disability itself.

People with disabilities and older people often face many barriers that have the effect of keeping them dependent on others and at the same time, silent and compliant to the wishes of the people they depend on. An obstacle or barrier is something that gets in the way. In this case, there are numerous obstacles in the way society is structured to allow people with disabilities to have independence, self-determination and empowerment.

 Select to learn more

Select each bar to expand and reveal further information on some barriers to independence and empowerment.

 Select to learn more

Select each bar to expand and reveal further information on how things are changing.

Social frameworks and empowerment

The social model of disability helps us to identify how the wider environment and community contribute to the level of impairment experienced by an older person or a person with a disability.

As you have seen, the attitudes of others, as well as physical and social barriers can increase the effects of the disability on the person.

In the past, the low expectations we ascribed to people with disabilities seemed to play out in low levels of achievement. Segregation meant lack of opportunities to learn the social skills expected at each stage of development.

Society saw this as further proof that people with disabilities needed to be cared for and sheltered in institutions, because the differences in abilities between them and non-disabled people were clearly unchangeable. The more dependent the person was on others over their lifetime, the less independence they were able to achieve.

We call this a cycle of dependency because we now know that this type of approach was circular and self-perpetuating.

The social model of disability

In the past, institutions for people with disabilities used the medical model of care. The medical model sees people who are older or have a disability as primarily a health problem that is dealt with by health professionals. The medical model focusses on treating illness or disability by trying to make the person more like ‘everyone else’. Age and disability are the ‘problem’ of the individual, who needs to be ‘fixed’ or cured.

The social model of disability believes that disability is largely the result of the barriers that we put up in our community. We built our society around the needs and abilities of non-disabled people, and people with disabilities had to either be left out, or find their own ways to fit in, communicate and live with us as a community.

Image by Freepik, Freepik Licence 

This model sees having a disability or being older as a normal part of human experience, and with a rightful place in the community. The social model tells us that if we remove the barriers, the person’s disability is reduced. This radically changes our historical way of looking at disability from ‘The disability is the problem’ to ‘The barriers in our community are the problem’.

In this way, the social model shifts the responsibility for making our community for everyone in it onto us, instead of onto the person with the disability. It focuses on what people can do and places ‘the problem’ with us. When society does not fully include and support access for older people and people with disabilities, we have created the disability.

Here are the main differences between the two models:

Medical model	Social model
The disability is the problem	Society is the problem
The person is sick and needs pity	The person can live a full and valuable life with the right support
People with disabilities should be cared for away from mainstream society, in institutions, where they can be cared for properly	People with disabilities belong in the community with everyone else

The social model in practice

As you have seen, we continue to make changes to our services and the wider community to reduce the effects of societal barriers on disability.

Examples of the social model working in our community include:

• disabled parking and toilets
• disability liaison offices in universities, train stations and other public institutions
• laws that make it an offense to refuse entry to a public place because of a guide dog or wheelchair
• additional supports to allow people with disability to attend school or university
• incentives to help employers make changes to the workplace so that a person with a disability can have better access
• subtitles on television programs.

Social justice principles

Social justice principles attempt to close gaps between people who face disadvantage and those who do not.

Social justice is a commitment to the belief that everyone has the right to equality, including the equal distribution of wealth, opportunity and privilege within a society, including equal access to community resources and opportunities.

Unfortunately, in our society, as in the past, this is not the case. The gap between wealth and poverty is growing, and people with disabilities are disadvantaged in many different ways, including gaps in education, employment, socio-economic status, wealth, as well as health and mental health outcomes. For people from Aboriginal or Torres Strait islander backgrounds who have disabilities or who are older, these gaps are even wider.

There are basic principles of social justice that form the basis of social change that attempts to close these gaps.

 Check your understanding

Fill in the blanks by dragging the words into the correct place, then select ‘Check’ to see if you are correct.

Breaking the cycle of disadvantage

The cycle of disadvantage and poverty works in a similar way to cycles of dependence. When a person faces disadvantage, the hurdles to achieving social equality with others are compounded over and over.

 Select to learn more

In order to achieve social justice and equity, we first need to break the cycle. Select the items on the image to reveal more information.

Image created by DALL E, OpenAI

Empowerment is about fostering independence and confidence. In your role as a support worker, this means you are teaching or aiding individuals to do things for themselves rather than doing it for them. This approach recognises that people have varying abilities, independence levels, personalities, confidence and experiences that influence their ability to advocate for themselves and achieve their dreams.