This book offers new content on a proactive resilience approach to social work practice which uses theoretical assumptions and practice strategies to help clients become more actively engaged in their own helping process. This approach to practice also builds on the assumption that clients have a natural propensity to strive for positive change. Given these assumptions about people’s self-righting tendencies, this practice text provides practitioners with ideas about how to bring the client (system) into a problem-solving relationship with the social worker. In this way, the practitioner can foster clients’ self-awareness of their own resiliency.

The book builds on previous texts on resilience-enhancing social work practice: A Resilience-Enhancing Stress Model (2022), Resilience Enhancement in Social Work Practice (2023), and Narrative Social Work Practice (2025). This fourth text augments the resilience-enhancing stress model (RESM) and serves as a practitioner’s guide to helping clients, who are faced with critical adverse experiences, maintain their functional capacity. The book's 14 chapters are organized in three sections:

•    Part I. Proactive Resilience: Theory and Skill Base
•    Part II. Proactive Resilience: Applications
•    Part III. Summary, Conclusions, and New Directions

The text suggests engagement, assessment, and intervention strategies can assist clients in understanding the balance between their risks and protective factors. It is organized around various fields of social work practice and provides practice examples with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. The technique of goal setting is discussed with a focus on clients who are combating oppressive environmental conditions involving diversity, equity, and inclusion. The intent of the book is to improve client well-being, support social justice, and enhance the resiliency of people as they live out their lives in social systems.

Resilience-enhancing social work practice has now evolved into an educational and practice framework that provides a renewed and valuable means of connecting with and nurturing clients during a time of uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in life. Active Resilience During Diverse and Changing Times is designed as a textbook that can be used in schools of social work at the BSW, MSW, and PhD levels.

Roberta Greene, PhD, MSW, LCSW, Professor Emerita, was the Louis and Ann Wolens Centennial Chair in Gerontology and Social Welfare at the University of Texas Austin. Prior to that, she was Dean of Social Work at Indiana University. Dr. Greene has a wide range of practice experience, including clinical practice, clinical supervision, policy, administrative, and research expertise. She is an NASW Pioneer, known for her advocacy work on nursing home reform. She was the 2015 recipient of the Knee/Whitman Outstanding Achievement Award, which recognizes significant impact on national health, public policy, and/or professional standards.  Dr. Greene has served on the CSWE Educational Policy Commission. A Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, she has conducted significant research on resilience among Holocaust survivors. A prolific author, she has written numerous books, six of which are on resilience. Others include Handbook of Human Behavior and the Social Environment (Aldine Transaction, 2016), Caregiving and Care Sharing: A Life Course Perspective (NASW Press, 2014), and Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice with Marginalized Oppressed Populations (Routledge, 2019).

Nancy Greene, DSW, MSW, MA, LCSW, has an MSW from the University of Texas-Austin and a MS from Nova Southeastern University, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Her doctorate is from the University of Southern California. She is a licensed clinical social worker who has practiced in home health care and hospice. She has taught for Tulane University, Grand Canyon University, and Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina. Dr. Greene is currently an adjunct professor at Norfolk State University School of Social Work (Virginia) where she teaches human behavior in the social environment and practice methods.