Gifts and Capacities
\r\nPeople and families are a pool of gifts and capacities, not a series of needs and deficiencies. Their suffering is an effect of their isolation and their being labeled. The struggle in their life is to find a way to use their gifts. In the way we traditionally deliver service, by raising money for and valuing their deficiencies, we reflect and reinforce the cause of some of their troubles.
\r\nWe still call citizens who seek help "cases." People who serve them are called "case workers." What does it mean when someone is labeled a "case"? Lawyers, social workers, human service workers in general dehumanize those they are committed to serve by naming them cases.
\r\nHuman services also relate to citizens through diagnostic categories. We are only interested in their needs and deficiencies. If a family or person has no pressing needs and deficiencies, nothing can be categorized, we have no interest in them. Perhaps we should develop diagnostic categories for people's gifts. Right now we have only crude positive labels: high-school graduate, economic status, size of family, job experience. Suppose we named people in categories, such as: a connector, knows everyone in the neighbourhood, street-level entrepreneur, fashion plate, compassion for those in need, lights up a room when they enter, creative speech, practical intelligence, risk taker. The shift is to focus on gifts and capacities.
\r\n Compiled From:
\r\n \"Community: The Structure of Belonging\" - Peter Block, pp. 169, 170