SSLD and Senior Service

Abstract

This chapter introduces the SSLD (Strategies and Skills Learning and Development) System as a comprehensive model for practice in psychosocial service for seniors. The challenges and issues associated with aging are complex, and involve physical, biological, psychological, social, existential and spiritual dimensions. In order to address them in a comprehensive and balanced manner, we need to draw on an extensive set of knowledge, experience and skills taken from various healthcare and human service professions. The SSLD system is built on a meta-theoretical structure that interfaces well with both analytic and holistic conceptualizations of the human person within his or her life-world, or being-in-the-world. Principles and methods of SSLD practice are described through phases of intervention: engagement and problem translation, N3C assessment, 6D (domains of being-in-the-world) formulation, implementation, review and evaluation. These are illustrated with practice examples. Issues related to practice research and knowledge production are also explored.

Social work and funeral service: A proposed framework for practice

“…A typical SSLD intervention goes through the following steps: (1) establishment of a positive working relationship or therapeutic alliance (Greenson, 2008); (2) translating the problems or issues presented by the client into a systematic assessment of the client's needs, circumstances, characteristics and capacity (N3Cs); (3) goal setting with specific attention to unmet needs; (4) designing an intervention plan, usually involving the learning and development of strategies and skills that directly address the unmet needs; and (5) implementation, ongoing monitoring and evaluation (Tsang, 2013). The SSLD system has been applied with positive results to a wide range of human service contexts including mental health (Tsang and Kim, 2010), health (Leung et al, 2018;Zhan et al, 2017), senior services (Tsang and Ip, 2018;Yang et al, 2015), dementia (Cheung et al, 2019;Li and Ho, 2019), settlement services (Tsang et al, 2014;Tsang and Li, 2017), sexuality (Chu et al, 2015) and student counselling (Fu and Duan, 2017;Tang et al, 2019).…”