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communicating

children

t is a well researched fact that social workers attain better results with families when they demonstrate a willingness to see things from everyones perspective but manage to maintain authoritative practice. In other words we need to empathise with a family before we are able to help them resolve some of their own problems which might otherwise lead to a child being taken into care or harmed. While social workers might think they are showing empathy, research by Professor Donald Forrester at the University of Bedfordshire in 2008 demonstrated convincingly that professionals were struggling with this particular skill. I often undertake a similar exercise (using a short vignette used by Forrester in his research) with social workers on my current training courses. You are on duty. A referral is received concerning a mother who often appears drunk when she picks up her eight-year-old child. You visit, and explain the nature of the referral to the mother. The mother says: Thats not true. I am on anti-depressants and they make me seem drunk. What should you say next?

Empathy: s most pow e

Neuroscience has revealed that social work skills can help rectify developmental damage to childrens brains. Professor David Shemmings explains

respond with empathy

I ask social workers to discuss which of the two following responses they prefer (each represents typical responses from Forresters research). This is contradictory to what the school is saying; the school feel you have presented drunk and this is why weve got the referral and were concerned. If youre saying its the anti-depressants, you need to go back to your GP and adjust the dose as its clearly a problem. Can I see the bottle of anti-depressants? Where does it say that on the label? Participants debate the merits of each response and opt for one or the other. However, they rarely protest that there is a problem with both responses yet both assume the parent is being dishonest. While it is of course possible that the parent is trying to deliberately mislead the worker, it is unlikely that either of these two responses will lead to a productive outcome: the parent will either become aggressive and argumentative or, worse still, feign compliance by appearing falsely co-operative. When social workers are invited to consider alternative responses they usually conclude that the preferred way forward, both in terms of co-operation and honesty, is to encourage the parent to speak a lot more than the worker. If there are doubts about whether she is telling the truth, the worker is more likely to pick this up by a) noting discord between non-verbal and verbal behaviour and b) noting discrepancies within the replies. The evidence-base of the power of communication skills is unequivocal: the best way to encourage a person to speak at length is by attentively and actively listening punctuated with empathic responses. But while practitioners know what I mean, they often struggle when I ask them to compose an empathic response to the mothers assertion the anti-depressants make me appear drunk. The closest they give is a sympathetic response, such as Oh, that sounds awful. A minimally empathic response would be something like this: You feel (annoyed/ angry/irritated) because, for you, youve been accused of something you didnt do. Adding for you indicates that the worker is not necessarily agreeing with the parent, simply that they understand the parents position. This kind of response is radically different from the two forced choices, and is likely to encourage the parent to say more. The role of the social worker is to encourage them to do so because its essential for building a trusting relationship and it also enables the worker to discover more, about all sorts of things.

edited by Judy Cooper judy.cooper@rbi.co.uk

InsIde thIs seCtIon 18 Online bullying and looked-after children 20 Good Practice: preventing placement breakdowns 21 What do serious case reviews really tell us?
Carespace Debate: Whats changed in SW since Munros report? http://bit.ly/v3qPDv

more from

COMMUNITYcare

Community Care Children and Families Live 2011, 16 November, www.childrenandfamilieslive.co.uk

CONFERENCES

attachment research
The development and maintenance of empathy in relationships is important for many reasons, some of which we are only just beginning to appreciate through recent discoveries in neurobiology and attachmentbased research. This research indicates strongly that maltreatment is often associated with low levels of mentalisation, a concept very similar to empathy. Mentalisation is the ability to
www.communitycare.co.uk 3 November 2011

To find out more about Inform, the online resource to help professionals make, and evidence, their decisions, email kim. poupart@rbi.co.uk

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