Ecological Perspective

Ecological Perspective

Social workers routinely find themselves in situations in which the needs of individuals, groups, or communities experiencing problems need to be assessed in order to determine the services or interventions that will help to safeguard them from harm and promote their well-being. Even in apparently straightforward cases, the social worker can be faced with a bewildering range of information that quickly becomes overwhelming without the help of some sort of organising framework. Ecological theory provides the basis for what is probably the most widely used organising framework in social work today.

In its broadest sense, the term ‘ecology’ refers to the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environments. Within this paradigm, the earth is understood to comprise a number of systems and subsystems, involving plants, animals, humans, and their physical surroundings, which are involved in constant processes of mutual interaction, with changes in one system often affecting others and vice versa. The developmental psychologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner, is usually credited as the first person to apply ecological thinking specifically to the social sphere of human development, although as he himself acknowledged (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), the ideas upon which his work was founded were far from new, drawing particularly on the formula developed by his former teacher that behaviour is a function of person and environment interactions (Lewin, 1936).

In what follows, the organising framework provided by social ecological theory is explained, including consideration of some of the most important ways in which people both shape and are shaped by their immediate and wider environments. Using examples primarily concerning parenting and the development of children, the implications of an ecological perspective for holistic, anti-oppressive social work practice are considered. The central importance of developing an understanding of the personal experiences and views of the people with whom social workers engage is highlighted, together with the benefits of promoting their access to informal sources of support, and of building the capacity of communities to meet the needs of their members.