Human Behavior and the Social Environment

The author presents the vulnerability, risk, and resilience model as a mechanism for improved content integration in the Human Behavior and the Social Environment sequence in social work education. The model demonstrates the interaction of community and social context variables with individual characteristics in the development of social work problems. The five steps in the model are (1) define the social work problem of concern, (2) identify risk and protective factors in the social context, (3) identify intrinsic vulnerability and invulnerability characteristics, (4) intersect these two, and (5) explore intervention: and prevention options. In addition, she provides a rationale and background for the model, describes the model itself, and develops an example from social work practice (adolescent substance abuse) for social work education.