Enabling and Empowering Families: Conceptual and Intervention Issues

The purpose of this paper is to examine what it means to be empowered, how different helping models either promote or inhibit a sense of empowerment, and how professionals might intervene in ways that promote the acquisition of self-sustaining and adaptive behavior that reflect a sense of empowerment. An enabling model of helping and a set of intervention principles are proposed that professionals can employ to increase the likelihood of children and families becoming empowered as part of help seeking and help giving exchanges.