Planning for children and families using a rights framework

Despite the rhetoric around strengths-based practice and empowerment, many professionals working with children and families use a deficit approach: assuming that if they identify and ‘fix’ the challenges the family are facing the family will become strong. In this paper I present the result of a research programme operated over many years focused around planning frameworks for community work with children and families.  The research has been undertaken in many different phases with students, families and professionals. The majority of the work has been undertaken using action research, with multiple cycles of reflection, implementation, evaluation and re-reflection resulting in the development of a planning model for community-based work with children and families. This approach is based on a rights framework thus enabling a genuine engagement with family and child strengths as the basis for planning.