Concepts and Theories of Empowerment and Competency

Abstract

This paper will present the conceptual analysis from the narrative literature review related to empowerment and competency from community development and social work disciplines. In research literature review will identifies, selects, and critically appraises research to clearly define the related concept and formulated question. Empowerment is one of concepts that become popular recently, but the debate on empowerment dates back several decades and frequently used by policy makers, politicians, community workers, social workers, and academicians. Four aspects of empowerment including a sense of efficacy, right to choose, competency, and meaningful. One of the important factors in empowerment is feelings of competence which is describe that people should have the necessary skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities to move forward to achieve empowerment. Competency is a combination of the set of knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform the role as a Social Worker (NASW, 2017) Competency is also used as a guideline that becomes a platform for evaluating the ability of Social Workers and community workers in carrying out their daily duties. Three theorical approach are related to studies of empowerment including the social structural empowerment theory, psychological empowerment theory and critical perspective.