11: Empowerment: Autonomy in Recovery

Empowerment is the process of becoming stronger and more confident in directing life with good effect. It has a dual taxonomy, first empowerment as a target, to control the determinants of quality of life. Second, empowerment as a means, where an individual, or group, are provided with the scaffold to advance their ability to autonomously assume responsibility for the change process that accomplishes this (Tengland, 2008). This two-fold construct of target and means realises both the facility of the individual and the responsibility of the professional in a process that equips people to make choices that influence their lives in a constructive way (Maiorano et al., 2021).