Ep 53 – Motivational Interviewing for Working with Children & Families
Ep 53 – Motivational Interviewing for Working with Children & Families
Glenn Hinds Motivational Interviewing for Working with Children & Families
In this episode exploring Motivational Interviewing in Work with Children & Families, Glenn and Sebastian meet Donald Forrester, Professor of Child and Family Social Work and Director of the CASCADE 
Centre for Children’s Social Care at Cardiff University in the UK. He has been researching and teaching about Motivational Interviewing in Work with Children & Families, and in particular the complicated nature of child protection conversations, for 20 years. Recently, with long term colleagues David Wilkins and Charlotte Whittaker, he published MI for Working with Children and Families, in which they tried to bring together their learning from this work and make suggestions about using MI in very difficult conversations.
Motivational Interviewing with children and families
Donald Forrester explores the use of Motivational Interviewing in child and family social work, including the difficult conversations that arise when practitioners must balance collaboration with responsibilities for a child’s safety. He considers what good social work looks like and how MI can support respectful, purposeful conversations with parents and children.
The episode examines MI spirit, vulnerability, supervision, selective use of MI and practitioner development, with a role play exploring an allegation of child abuse. These themes connect with the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing, Partnership and Acceptance.
In this episode
00:00 – Introduction and episode preview
05:15 – Donald’s early MI story and lessons from MI research
12:00 – Shift within children’s social care: From “get on with it” to models of good practice
15:45 – What does it mean to be a “good social worker” and how does MI fit?
20:00 – Balancing MI spirit with a child’s safety
25:00 – Recognizing the needs of the vulnerable parent and the experience of “agape”
30:45 – Modeling good care in supervision
33:00 – Can one selectively use MI?
37:00 – Growing as an MI practitioner
40:20 – Using with MI children, using MI with parents, and teaching MI to parents
47:45 – Role play: Exploring an allegation of child abuse
58:48 – Role play debrief
1:09:45 – “Good authority: Purposefulness; Focus on the child; and Clarity about concerns
1:13:30 – The next book: Framing social work as rights based
1:18:06 – End of episode
Links and contact information:
Email: forresterd@cardiff.ac.uk
Twitter: @DonaldForr
Donald’s book “Motivational Interviewing for working with children and families”:
Listen to Episode 53
Contact Talking to Change
Podcast: podcast@glennhinds.com
Glenn: glenn@glennhinds.com
Sebastian: sebkaplan34@gmail.com
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