Social Role Valorization - Overview

Overview

Although Normalization and the initial versions of SRV were described as an 'Ideology', the most recent formulation explicitly denies that SRV is about what should be done, and reinforces that SRV is intended to be a tool for analysis of the process and effects of Societal Devaluation. Wolfensberger's most recent (1999) definition of SRV is: "the application of what science can tell us about the enablement, establishment, enhancement, maintenance, and/or defence of valued social roles for people" (Susan Thomas and Wolf Wolfensberger in Flynn and Lemay 1999, p. 125).

Social Role Valorization (SRV) is a relationship theory of empirical knowledge for the design and rendering of formal and informal services and relationships to people with any need or condition, especially those who are devalued or are at risk. Social Role Valorization is intended to address the social and psychological wounds that are inflicted on vulnerable people because they are devalued, that so often come to define their lives and that in some instances wreak lifelong havoc on those who are close to them.

SRV does not in itself propose a 'goal'. However a person who has a goal of improving the lives of devalued people may choose to use insights gained from SRV to cause change. They may do so by attempting to create or support socially valued roles for people in their society, because if a person holds valued social roles, a person is highly likely to receive from society those good things in life that are available or at least the opportunities for obtaining them. In other words, all sorts of good things that other people are able to convey are almost automatically apt to be accorded to a person who holds societally valued roles, at least within the resources and norms of his/her society.

Social Role Valorization identifies Social Devaluation as a critical human experience that has long-term effects on the individual. SRV is designed to raise consciousness about the fate of Socially Devalued persons. SRV holds that the human being is vulnerable to the regard of others for both the heights of edification and the depths of degradation.

An understanding of Social Role Valorization can leads to ideas about how to improve the lives of people who are devalued by society. These can be seen to have two themes - firstly removing devaluing features (for instance people being segregated from society in a building along with others perceived to belong to the same group), and secondly taking action that leads to people being valued. On one the approaches of SRV involves Socially Valued persons to ally themselves with Socially Devalued persons. This alliance will unify people, broaden acceptance of differences, and encourage the coexistence of people.

SRV is a realistic if not pessimistic sense of human behaviour, holding that human beings are imperfect and capable of great evils even if they are occasionally saintly, heroic or kind.

Social Role Valorization is designed to address the social and psychological wounds that get inflicted on vulnerable people because they are devalued, that so often come to define their lives, and that in some instances wreak lifelong havoc on them those who are close and committed to them.