BLOG PODS #23 - Theory Bites 2 - Abraham Maslow: Hierarchy of Human Needs
INTRODUCTION
Of all the theories I hear mentioned by colleagues in social work, youth justice, youth work and mental health, Maslow is the most common. And by a country mile!
For most, though, this seems to hark back to their training-often many years ago-when it was at least featured, if not fully taught.
We at the TRM Academy refer to it quite a bit when we’re explaining how the Trauma Recovery Model constitutes this and a number of other theories of human development.
But what exactly is ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy’ and what does it contribute by way of practice guidance for the work we all do with troubled children?
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
As we’ve said, this is one of the most well-known psychological theories, often depicted in graphic form as a pyramid (an idea we nicked for the TRM). It helps us understand the different levels of human needs, from the most basic to the more complex, as they unfold over time.
Originally designed to explain adult motivation, it has significant implications for child development as well. Let's break it down and explore how this theory might be applied in practice, especially for practitioners working with children who have experienced trauma or abuse.
The Hierarchy of Needs Explained
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is usually represented as a five-tier pyramid, where each level corresponds to a specific category of human needs. These needs must be met, starting from the bottom and moving upwards sequentially:
1. Physiological Needs:
* What They Are: These are the most basic human needs, necessary for survival. They include food, water, oxygen, shelter, sleep and clothing. Remember these are the basics, so it’s not about how posh or luxurious the home is or whether the food is gourmet and expensive, but rather are they warm, dry, fed, cared for and safe.
* In Child Development: For children, these needs are absolutely fundamental. A child who is hungry, tired or lacking shelter will not be able to focus on anything beyond these immediate concerns, so deepening our interventions - or indeed their recovery - is futile till these things are resolved. Also, in assessment, we do well not be distracted into focusing on the surface problems, when there may be something far more fundamental missing.
2. Safety Needs:
* What They Are: Once physiological needs are met, the need for safety and security follows next. This is about physical safety, but also things like a stable home environment and enough money to be economically secure. This stage includes emotional security and health, too; kids whose medical or emotional needs are left unmet, can’t settle, never mind recover from life’s bigger challenges.
* In Child Development: A child needs to feel safe from harm, abuse and neglect. A chaotic or unsafe environment will not yield good attachments and the developmental necessities connected with it - like co-regulation and language development. Such an environment can severely hinder a child’s ability to develop trust and confidence and a healthy, balanced internal working model.
3. Love and Belongingness Needs:
* What They Are: Humans have an inherent need for love, connection and belonging; their developing sense of the world, themselves and how to relate to others all depend on this. Healthy, safe and consistent relationships with family, friends and community all play their part. Belonging is different from ‘being related’; inclusive care and the sense that children are wanted by their caregivers, are crucial. As such, children in foster or other substitute care settings can absolutely feel loved and that they belong - in fact, it’s crucial for such care to succeed.
* In Child Development: Children thrive on positive relationships. They need to feel loved and accepted by their family and, eventually, their peers. This is especially important for children who have experienced rejection or separation from birth families or individuals within it. An essential part of who we are relates to who we’re connected to. If children grow without ‘belonging’ how will they go on to make, develop and maintain the relationships on which their future will depend?
4. Esteem Needs:
* What They Are: Esteem needs involve the desire for respect, self-esteem and recognition. People need to feel valued, respected and confident in their abilities if they are to ‘fit’ in the world, contribute to and fully benefit from it.
* In Child Development: Developing a sense of self-worth and confidence is crucial for children. Encouragement, praise and a sense of accomplishment help build a child’s self-esteem by showing them that their ‘value’ in the world is recognised by others. In turn, this will help them muster the confidence they need to navigate daily life in an increasingly independent way, as well as reach out to others, form intimate bonds and fulfil their potential.
5. Self-Actualisation:
* What It Is: This is the highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy. It represents the need to realise one's potential and achieve personal growth. This, more than all the other layers (obviously!), depends on the fulfilment, at least in part, of the previous stages of development. An adult who has never really felt safe, valued or related to others, will struggle to develop the self-esteem they need to push through into new areas, skills, places and experiences - without all that, their lives will be qualitatively limited.
* In Child Development: For very young children, self-actualisation is still a distant goal. But, parents and carers, as well as teachers, tutors, play workers, sports coaches and others, can all contribute to the journey towards this. Encouraging kids to explore their interests and their talents, to express creativity, try new things and pursue their passions will all afford opportunities to explore what ‘might be.’ It’s about helping children become who they truly are and have a sense that that’s what’s happening, without being self-conscious, reluctant or allowing themselves to be limited by anything but their own pursuit of life!
The Pyramid
While often depicted as a pyramid, Maslow himself never used this visual representation.
For me, the advantage of this kind of schematic representation of the theory is two-fold:
* Firstly, is reminds us of the essentially sequential nature of human development - that we grow and mature through a series of stages that have pre-potency - in other words each stage presupposes at least the partial attainment of the one before it. In this respect there’s a co-dependency to the stages - no-one jumps from belonging to self-actualisation. This feature is common to nearly all the major theories of human development.
* Secondly, the pyramid depicts a sense of movement, of potential and of the ongoing importance of the foundational developmental needs - these continue to have relevance, despite the essential developmental progress being achieved. For example, if a child feels unsafe now, this will inevitably unsettle their current functioning, so restoring safety is the issue, not the behaviour that comes from being and feeling unsafe. Bearing this principle in mind can be a useful ongoing guide.
Applying Maslow’s Theory to Child Development
Maslow’s theory suggests that unmet needs at any level can significantly affect a child’s ability to move to the next stage - in other words, children can get ‘stuck’ early in their development, such that progress is significantly hindered.
If a child’s basic needs aren’t met, it’s unlikely they will feel safe. If they don’t feel safe, they won’t be able to trust others and form meaningful relationships and so on.
Understanding this sequence can help us professionals tailor our support to address these needs in the right order.
For me, it’s less about the actual stuff at each stage and more about recognising that development is sequential; it happens in a certain order - this will emerge as a recurring theme as we go through the various theories in this series.
Practical Implications for Social Workers and Professionals
Understanding Maslow's hierarchy can provide a roadmap for working with children who have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect, as well as a range of other difficulties.
Here’re some thoughts on how (as always, NOT an exhaustive list, just a few thoughts from me):
1. Addressing Basic Needs First:
* What to Do: Ensure that the child’s basic physiological and safety needs are met before attempting any therapeutic interventions. This might mean ensuring they have access to food, stable housing, appropriate clothing and medical care.
* Let’s not assume that because a house looks OK on the surface, that all the child’s basic survival needs are being met.
* Speaking to school and other professionals to see what they’ve noticed can help with this. I’ve lost count now how many times I’ve heard teaching colleagues remark that they think a child may be arriving at school hungry, cold, unkempt or tired. Such observations need to be investigated, at least informally.
* Why It’s Important: These are the kinds of things that inject inertia into a child’s development. Resolving them, though, can let the brakes off and free a child to make rapid progress again.
2. Creating a Safe and Stable Environment:
* What to Do: Work towards providing a safe, stable, and predictable environment. This could involve finding safe foster placements or working with families to improve home conditions and/or parenting practices.
* One of the most frequent observations I have to make when helping colleagues work through challenging cases, is that ‘this child isn’t safe.’ And if they’re not safe, nothing else matters. The automatic, pre-conscious survival system - the stress-response system or the alert state - will over-ride everything else (we’ll look at Steven Porges’ Polyvagal Theory in a later post).
* We can’t remove the danger from the child until we remove the child from the danger. It can only happen in that order. This first is hard to do but is relatively quick. The second may take months or years.
* Without these safety needs being met, children not be able to engage in or benefit from higher-level interventions like therapy or educational support. Get this right, though, and you’re rocking and rolling! Progress can be swift as long as consistency and safety are maintained.
* Why It’s Important: Safety is the foundation for all further development. Children who don’t feel safe cannot focus on building relationships or developing self-esteem.
3. Building Relationships:
* What to Do: Encourage and support the development of positive, consistent relationships. This could be with family members, foster carers or peers.
* If a child’s early experience has lacked a sound attachment with a parent or caregiver, they will struggle to trust others and make, maintain and deepen relationships.
* Relationships with other people and the feedback these provide build a child’s image of themselves and their value in the world. Psychologists call this a child’s ‘internal working model.’ Ask yourself, given the way this child behaves and presents, what might their internal (likely subconscious) view of themself be like?
* Help, guide, support and encourage the child and their carers to focus on and build relationships. Having a sense of positive connectedness is intrinsic to and maintaining of a good internal working model, which in turn will feed in to future relationship building.
* For some children this prospect is hard, even terrifying, so we as professionals can help by taking on the long, hard process of helping them get started. Our work is, or should be, more about relating to the child, rather than merely facilitating or organising others to provide care for the child.
* Why It’s Important: Strong, loving relationships help children feel connected and valued. For children who have experienced relational trauma, this can be a slow process, requiring patience and persistence from everyone involved. Knowing this and using our professional status, influence and expertise to ‘hold’ the network around the child while all this unfolds, is time very well spent.
4. Promoting Self-Esteem:
* What to Do: Provide opportunities for the child to experience success and recognise their achievements. Use positive reinforcement and avoid criticism.
* One of the skills I’m most grateful to my psychology colleagues for teaching over the years, is the ability to notice, highlight and celebrate the small wins. Too often we can be disheartened by the apparent lack of progress in the work. But when we do the right thing developmentally and hang in there long enough we will see progress. But you have to look for it. Learning to notice these things is great ammunition when it comes to feeling better ourselves, but also in our role as encouragers of others.
* When children act out a bit less, respond slightly differently or smile a little more for example, it’s likely because something is changing internally and progress is afoot. Taking time to write down such observations can help us stay aware of and capture in our agency records, the incremental forward changes taking place. Developing the skill of noticing the small stuff is invaluable when it comes to signposting others to this, not least the child themselves.
* Why It’s Important: Building self-esteem is crucial for children who have experienced trauma, as they often struggle with feelings of worthlessness or shame. Small, consistent successes can help to slowly rebuild their self-confidence, correct a negative internal working model and provide a firmer foundation for their ongoing developmental progress.
5. Supporting Self-Actualisation:
* What to Do: Encourage children to explore their interests, talents, and aspirations. Provide opportunities for creative expression, learning and personal growth.
* When my son was about 3 years old we took him to a music event where a bunch of little kids were given opportunity to explore various musical instruments. When the playing and the noise died down, the person charge approached us and told us, very seriously, that our child just might be a natural flautist. She said she’d never before seen a 3 year old pick up a flute and get a sound of of it; but he did.
* Now, he never went on to play the flute, but there’s a principle here: when kids are given time and opportunity to explore their talents and preferences, surprises can happen.
* As professionals, we have tons of opportunities to encourage children, parents and carers in this direction. We can actively avoid tropes and caricatures, gendered assumptions and obvious short cuts. We can open up the world to kids just by the way we talk about it and them in such a way that suggests, ‘why not?’ And says, ‘go for it!’
* Kids from troubled families whose start in life has been tough, can still be encouraged to grab life by the throat, explore it with gusto, try new things and find out for themselves. Limitations start in the mind, don’t they? So why can’t we open that up the kids we work with by being catalysts for adventure and joy?
* Why It’s Important: Helping children to discover and pursue their interests supports their overall development and helps them see beyond their past trauma to a future full of potential.
Challenges and Considerations
While Maslow’s theory provides a useful framework, there are challenges in applying it directly to children who have experienced significant trauma:
* Complex Needs: Many children in social care or mental health services have complex, overlapping needs that don’t fit neatly into Maslow’s hierarchy. No taxonomy can be rigidly applied to people, they’re just too varied and complex for that. So it’s important to be flexible and responsive to each child’s unique situation.
* Cultural Differences: The hierarchy is based on Western ideals and may not fully encompass the needs and values of children from different cultural backgrounds, but the basics apply across the piece, in my view. We just may need to think a bit more and be creative to find ways through.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For my money, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs offers a really helpful perspective for understanding the developmental needs of children, especially those who have experienced trauma or adversity.
For social workers, teachers, youth workers, foster carers, residential staff and other professionals, it serves as a reminder to address the whole child, starting with their most basic needs and working upwards. We must learn to adjust our work interventions to ‘fit’ the current state of play for the child - theoretical models can really help us do that.
By ensuring that children’s fundamental needs are met, creating safe environments, fostering positive relationships, and supporting their self-esteem and personal growth, we can help children heal, grow, and thrive.
While the journey may be challenging, understanding the layers of need provides a valuable guide for making a real difference in the lives of vulnerable children.
See you in the next one!
More Information
* PAPER: A Theory of Human Motivation by A.H.Maslow: downloadable pdf (link) or webpage (link)
* PAPER: The Trauma Recovery Model: Sequencing Youth Justice Interventions For Young People With Complex Needs (link)
* WEBSITE: TRM Academy website (link)
* DOWNLOAD: Get a free downloadable copy of the Trauma Recovery Model (link)
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