Integrating Strength-based Social Work Interview and Eco-justice Ethical Approach in Assessing Living Conditions for Migrant Women and Families in Africa

This paper assessed migrant women and families' living conditions within an ecological justice ethical approach. The DSM-5 provides diagnostic coding of problems that focuses on clinical attention for depression, anxiety disorder diagnosis and other psycho-social disorders that are unfairly diagnosed as mental illness than social malady (Wakefield, 2013, Robbins, 2014).The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) category has the cultural-safety capability information appropriate to diagnostic valuation and treatment that cater for psycho-social problems, yet, scholars have cautioned social workers 'not to buy into the medical model that DSM stimulates due to it weakens and clashes with social workers' model of valuations and interventions are experiential within the systems and social levels' (Frazer, Westhuis, Daley and Phillips, 2009; Corcoran & Walsh, 2006). This paper implies that by integrating a strength-based social work interview with the cultural-safety capability information could assist clients overcoming obstacles, provide problem-solving solutions and make linkages with resources more efficiently. The paper uses a descriptive scooping analysis in form of article reviews on the cultural safety capability information within DSM-5 diagnosis to illustrate and involve concepts of an ecological justice path for ethical practice within strength-based frameworks for social work interview. Thus, the victim-focus narrative therapy and eco-justice ethical implication with current environmental hazards were analysed. This study explored the extent to which the strength-based frameworks in social work interview (DSM-5) should assist migrant women and families to rebound motivations and confidence through the application of eco-justice ethical resourceful beneficiations in coping with life threatening circumstances. Furthermore, practitioners should engage migrant women and families toward informational recognition, discernment and the use of strengths-based culturally-sensitive interviews in redirecting assets, reducing unbiased facts and idiosyncratic feelings in containing barriers, curbing migrant women and family vulnerabilities through capabilities of persons and social cohesion.