Overview of the SPEC Model

The SPEC (Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment and Community change) model is an attempt to promote strength-based, preventative, empowering, and community change practice in human services. SPEC is based in empirical research, community practice, and community psychology theory.

SPEC is about wellness, social justice, and the human and community benefits that can come from practice that attends to all four elements of SPEC:

Strengths:	Recipients of services, community members, and communities have strengths. They have assets which help them to cope with difficult situations and to develop resilience. Yet, certain practices and policies concentrate more on people’s deficits than on people’s strengths. A strength-based orientation helps identify and build on individual and community assets, resilience, and ability to thrive in difficult situations. This is opposed to focusing on individual and community deficits or diagnosing disorders. Workers and organizations have strengths. Workers bring a variety of skills, experiences, and creative potential into the workplace. A strength-based orientation in an organization recognizes staff members’ unique skills, talents, and resources and integrates them into organizational practice. An organization with this orientation provides opportunities for employees to fully utilize and develop their strengths. Employees are encouraged to take risks, achievements and accomplishments are celebrated, and missteps are seen as opportunities for learning.
Prevention:	Primary prevention is about preventing problems before they occur. It means taking action to decrease the chances that a particular problem will affect a person, group, or an entire community. Prevention works by identifying and reducing risk factors and by identifying and promoting protective factors in individuals, families, and communities. Prevention is also important in the workplace. It means taking action to decrease the likelihood that a particular problem will affect an employee, a group or the entire organization. It is about promoting the health of the organization and the individuals working there. Prevention means attending to workplace conditions such as a physically and emotionally safe working environment, open communication without fear of retribution, adequate supports and benefits, a manageable workload, and celebrating diversity of all kinds.
Empowerment:	Participation and empowerment refer to community members having perceived and actual voice and choice in issues and decisions that affect their lives. In an empowering program, community members share decision-making power and control over resources with professionals. Empowerment programs aim to increase the power of individuals, groups, and entire communities. Participation and empowerment in the workplace refer to members having as much voice as possible in the way an organization is run and control over various aspects of their job. Organizational members share information, responsibility, and decision-making power with each other. Workers at all levels of the organization are able to fully participate in organizational dialogue and decisions, and resources are allocated to make this possible.
Community Change:	Some of the problems that individuals and entire communities face result from poor community and living conditions. Community change means addressing the root causes of the problems people and communities face. It also means creating new systems or structures that enhance citizen participation and well-being, removing barriers to services and supports, and promoting social policies that enhance well-being and people’s ability to thrive. Organizations also have conditions that either cause problems for their members or promote optimal human and organization functioning. These conditions may be structural (staffing, groups and teams, leadership, communication, roles, policies, training), political (power sharing, decision-making, fairness, conflict management), or cultural (learning, norms, vision, openness, mutual respect, celebration). Organizations thrive when they change organizational conditions and systems in order to better promote overall worker health and organizational effectiveness.