The social worker-ombudsman partnership: using a resident-centered model of situational conflict tactics

This article presents a tactical protocol to guide social workers and ombudsmen in explaining their conflict behavior in fundamentally imbalanced power structures like nursing homes. It is argued that efficient case advocacy requires the selection of tactics based on the confluence of two conditional factors on a low to high continuum in the following priority: (a) the urgency and severity of the resident's needs, and (b) the facility's level of resistance. Seven possible influence tactics are presented within the broad strategies of relation-building, campaign/collaboration, and contest.