Table Of ContentRoberta Greene
Nicole Dubus
Nancy Greene
A Resilience-
Enhancing
Stress Model
A Social Work Multisystemic
Practice Approach
A Resilience-Enhancing Stress Model
Roberta Greene • Nicole Dubus • Nancy Greene
A Resilience-Enhancing
Stress Model
A Social Work Multisystemic Practice
Approach
Roberta Greene Nicole Dubus
School of Social Work School of Social Work
The University of Texas at Austin San Jose State University
Austin, TX, USA San José, CA, USA
Nancy Greene
School of Social Work
Norfolk State University
Norfolk, VA, USA
ISBN 978-3-031-08111-8 ISBN 978-3-031-08112-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08112-5
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To all forced migrants across the globe
Foreword
The book A Resilience-Enhancing Stress Model: A Social Work Multisystemic
Practice Approach by Roberta Greene, Nicole Dubus, and Nancy Greene is intended
to assist people facing adversity or inordinate stress to reduce risks and maintain
resilient effective functioning.
The four-phase model and its embedded skill set guides the social worker through
client engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation on behalf of diverse
individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Chapters discuss
such stressors as biopsychosocial disruption, social economic and environmental
justice, forced migration, climate change, and ecological degradation.
Evolving over the past two decades, the resilience-enhancing stress model
(RESM) is a much-needed social work practice approach that could come at no bet-
ter time when living with an awareness of uncertainty is commonplace.
Clinical Social Worker, Older Adult Department Harriet L. Cohen
Jewish Family Service,
Dallas, TX, USA
vii
Preface
I am a professor of social work and have taught undergraduates and graduates the-
ory and practice for over 20 years. I am a clinical practitioner and have been practic-
ing as a licensed clinical social worker since 1990. I mention this because these
experiences are why I am enthusiastic about the resilience-enhancing stress
model (RESM).
Social work as a profession has adapted theories from other disciplines (biology,
psychology, and sociology, to name a few) to deepen the field’s understanding of
human behavior and our social environment. Social work has its own theories devel-
oped from over a century of research and practice. The life course development
perspective, ecological theory, and strength perspective are hallmarks of social work.
However, as a teacher, translating theory into practice for students just learning
to be practitioners can be challenging. A student can be introduced to a theory, for
example, the life course perspective, and not be able to apply it in their work. How
do you take a concept and turn it into concrete skills? In teaching students intersec-
tionality and cultural humility, how do teachers operationalize these concepts into
effective interventions? How does knowing the spheres of influence as described in
ecological theory show students how to work with this knowledge? How can know-
ing the developmental stage of a person you are helping inform your understanding
and the interventions you use?
This is where the resilience-enhancing stress model excels. As a metatheory, it
takes several concepts and theories that are often difficult to operationalize and
translates them into awareness, interventions, and skills. In each chapter, there are
practice examples with different populations. That is helpful to students, but many
textbooks offer examples. However, this book is practice-focused with explanations
about what each theory within this metatheory offers, and how to use those theories
in working with clients, communities, or agencies.
The reader might wonder if RESM is made up of known social work theories,
why learn it? Because it has the power to bring our field of social work into its next
chapter, moving us closer to a profession that moves beyond cultural humility
toward cultural effectiveness and empowerment. In fact, RESM operationalizes
core social work concepts and theories and provides a path to culturally effective
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x Preface
interventions. In the heart of this metatheory is the belief that deep within each of us
is the ability to adapt and grow.
RESM could not have developed at a better time for our profession and for the
world. We are living in a time of great disruption and fear. Xenophobia and social
injustice have increased to levels not seen since our profession was formed in the
late 1800s. We need refined tools forged from years of experience to effectively
address our current times. Dr. Roberta Greene’s professional experiences and
research have informed RESM. Dr. Greene has worked on the Council on Social
Work Education (CSWE) and helped develop the Educational Policy and
Accreditation Standards (EPAS). I believe her work clarifies the intention of the
EPAS and therefore is a crucial addition to the social work curriculum.
I remember the first time I introduced RESM into my courses. We were discuss-
ing the ecological theory and the life course perspective, and I wanted to help them
understand how these theories can inform their work. My research is on forced
migration, so I gave an example of a refugee family and demonstrated how each of
the core theories embedded in RESM helped me engage, assess, intervene, evaluate,
and terminate with a client system. That was very helpful, and the students took to
it easily. When they used narrative therapy to create the third space, students quickly
made the connection between the third space, cultural humility, and intersectional-
ity. RESM asks us to deliberately set our assumptions and biases aside as we con-
struct the third space with our clients. This has operationalized how to be culturally
humble. With a foundation of intersectionality, students can successfully engage
and assess diverse client systems.
A challenge for many new social workers is to know what the issue/problem for
the client is, and which interventions to use. RESM provides guidance. With a focus
on the client’s strengths and past evidence of resilience, social workers have clear
objectives and a pathway to guide their interventions.
RESM was developed to help people during times of social distress. Social dis-
tress can be caused by war, pandemics, oppression, and natural disasters, among
other causes. It is a theory that can be applied on the individual level, with families,
groups, communities, and organizations. RESM’s use of narrative therapy gives
practitioners a conceptual space to inhabit that intersection of roles, power, privi-
lege, oppression, and identity of the worker and client that is intersectionality.
RESM importantly has as its foundational assumption that those we help are the
experts on themselves and that practitioners, through the use of the third space, can
identify the client’s strengths and evidence of past and current resilience. As we
reflect on their strengths and resilience, we can help client systems become aware of
their coping skills and troubleshoot with the actions they can take.
Dr. Greene will tell you that this is not a clinical theory for therapy with clients,
but one designed to help restore people’s functioning to the level they were before
the distressful events. However, I have found this theory to be useful in teaching
students how to engage, how to discover the client’s strengths, and allow the client
to tell the worker what is important about their lived experiences and cultural identi-
ties. For me, RESM is transferable to many roles within social work.
Preface xi
Early on I stated that our current times demand we have refined tools forged from
years of experience. RESM is one of those refined tools. Our profession is a
dynamic, ever-changing one that bends and grows with the needs of the times. We
need to grow, and RESM is a fantastic model to use as we develop bold and nuanced
changes that our diverse world requires.
San José, CA, USA Nicole Dubus
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all our family and friends who listened to us talk about the book.
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