INFUSED APPROACH
Solutions-Focused
Brief Therapy (SFBT)
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Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP)
Limitations of SFBT
While SFBT is an intervention with many strengths, it also has several limitations that must be considered within a critical social work practice. The following section highlights some of the main limitations of SFBT based on those identified by Healy (2014).
Emphasis on individual action and responsibility
Some practitioners argue that SFBT can be viewed as a “systemic therapy” (de Shazer et al., 2007, p. 3) because it is often used in therapeutic interventions with families and couples; therefore, it is seen as intervening in the level of the “family system”.
Practitioners who label SBFT as a “systemic therapy” also note that the solutions discussed within therapeutic sessions often involve a service user’s interactions with other people or with systems within their life. Furthermore, these practitioners observe that “once small changes begin to occur, larger changes often follow, and those larger changes are usually interactional and systemic” (p. 3).
However, this definition of “systemic intervention” is very different from other definitions of “systemic intervention” that aim to change the environment, or from “structural interventions” that aim to address how structures like white supremacy and settler colonialism create oppressive conditions for individuals and groups.
Indeed, a limitation of SFBT is that it places emphasis and responsibility on the service user to make changes in their environment; interventions do not focus on directly modifying conditions within the environment (Healy, 2014).
Does not take into account barriers, including structural obstacles
Similar to the limitation above, SFBT does not consider the barriers and obstacles that an individual might encounter when trying to work toward their goals or hopes.
These barriers also include structural considerations, like racism or transphobia, that might limit the amount of change that an individual can actually implement in their life, even if they proceed with hope and determination (Healy, 2014, p. 178).
Does not highlight or encourage broader social change
Indeed, SFBT practitioners “rarely aspire to broader social change” (Healy, 2014, p. 179).
Instead, intervention is focused on helping the service user move toward solutions within the environment that they inhabit, without discussing, for example, how their problems are connected to broader social problems or how they might work toward changing the structural conditions that contribute to their problem.
Falsely assumes objectivity is possible
Healy (2014) notes that a limitation of the strengths-based perspectives is that the evaluation of something as a “strength” is fundamentally contrary to the self-defined “objective” stance of the therapist.
Similarly, we would argue that while SFBT practitioners claim the stance of being non-judgmental and objective, the values and worldview of the practitioner are re-centered in the co-construction process as the therapists’ solution-focused questions will be rooted in what the therapist recognizes as a potential solution.
For example, Lee and Bhuyan (2013) note that “patterns and structures of naturally occurring talk in therapeutic encounters can reproduce whiteness as a powerful organizing principle” (p. 121). Furthermore, Ying Yee (2004) notes that “whiteness” includes the “social processes” which enable “the dominant and/or majority group’s ability” to normalize “the inferior position of minority cultures,” often in ways that are not visible or recognized (p. 98).
An AOP-Infused Approach?
As we can see, a common theme threaded throughout some of the main limitations of SFBT is its narrow view of intervention and change—it does not focus on structural conditions as a consideration for discussion, or as a location of change.
It also does not look at the barriers, including structural barriers, that might prevent an individual from enacting a “solution”.
Based on the solution-focused orientation of SFBT, a likely reason for this is because to focus on barriers or structural components would be to focus on a “problem”.
Infusing an AOP lens into a SFBT approach, therefore, might address some of the limitations inherent to SFBT.
The table below briefly reflects on five of AOP’s main practice principles and considers if/how these principles are present in conventional SFBT approaches.
Based on the chart above, we have three ideas for an AOP-infused SFBT approach:
AOP-Infused SFBT approach
means, briefly:
Respecting a client’s experience and knowledge as central to their ability to construct solutions within their own lives while also maintaining a critical framework in order to, whenever possible, open up opportunities for solutions that connect to structural levels.
Concluding tensions:
Is objectivity even achievable or desirable?
One of the core tenets of SFBT is for the practitioner to maintain an objective view and ensure that the solutions co-constructed during a session are not influenced by the practitioner’s own values or beliefs (Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association, 2013, pp. 4-6).
Our suggestions for an AOP-infused SFBT approach disrupt this tenet by asking practitioners to draw attention to structural connections within a SFBT intervention, when possible.
However, as we have discussed in the limitations section above, we do not believe that it actually possible for a therapist to achieve an “objective” stance; dominant structures and values, such as whiteness, are re-centered in contexts as simple as identifying what is, and is not, a solution (Lee & Bhuyan, 2013; Ying Yee, 2004).
We think, therefore, that critical social workers should draw attention to structural conditions that may shape a service user’s goals or identified solutions within SFBT interventions.
In other words, we believe that social workers who use SFBT interventions without critical considerations, such as an AOP-infused lens, are not obtaining “objectivity”; rather, they are asserting a worldview that normalizes and upholds existing structural conditions, inequities, and forms of oppression.
It is important to note, however, that the use of critical perspectives like AOP does not absolve a social worker from complicity or direct participation in the perpetuation of oppressive structures and material inequities (see, for e.g., Blackstock, 2009; Chapman & Withers, 2019; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013).