ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the features of person-environment practice and explores some specific principles of person-environment practice, with particular attention to assessments and interventions directed to personal social networks. It deals with comments and cautions on the challenges facing family group conferencing as it makes the transition from practice innovation to a more mature status among the array of strategies available for practice with vulnerable families. A primary concern in Person-Environment Practice is the promotion of personal and social empowerment. Julian Rappaport defined it as a commitment to "identify, facilitate, or create contexts. In Person-Environment Practice, this commitment involves sustained attention to issues of partnership, participation, and power, particularly as these are expressed in the relationships between client systems and professionals. In both assessment and intervention, person-environment practice is centrally concerned with the relationships between people and their environmental contexts. The chapter discusses two dimensions of social network interventions in person-environment practice such as network mapping, and network facilitation.
