Integrated
Safety-Organized Practice
Module Two:
Three Questions
to Organize Your Practice
Children’s Research Center
A nonprofit social research organization and division of the
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
1
www.nccd-crc.org
www.nccd-crc.org
Module
Subject
1
Interviewing for Safety and Danger
2
Three Questions to Organize Your Practice
3
Small Voices, Big Impact: Keeping Children at the Center of the Work
4
Solution-focused Inquiry
5
Introduction to Mapping
6
Harm Statements, Danger Statements and Safety Goals
7
Mapping With Families
8
Safety Networks
9
Safety Planning
10
Landing Safety-Organized Practice in Everyday Work
11
Organizational Environments: Reflection, Appreciation, and Ongoing
Learning
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Summary and Looking to the Future
2
Agreements
• “Try on.”
• Everyone always has the right to pass.
• Know that silence is a contribution.
• We agree to share airtime and stick to time limits.
• We agree to speak personally, for ourselves as individuals.
• We agree to disagree and avoid making assumptions or generalities.
• We agree to allow others to finish speaking before we speak and
avoid interrupting and side conversations.
• We will work together to hold to these agreements and authorize the
trainer to hold us to them.
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Our Thinking Draws From
the Legacy of Others
Insoo Kim Berg
Steve de Shazer
Rob
Sawyer
Sue
Lohrbach
Andrew
Turnell
Susie
Essex
Steve
Edwards
Nicki
Weld
Sonja
Parker
Carver
County
…and we hope YOU will continue to build
on these ideas and approaches.
CRC
Staff
John Vogel
Sophia Chin
Heather Meitner
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Reminder: What is this Series About?
Safety is:
Actions of protection
taken by the caregiver
that mitigate the danger,
demonstrated over time.
Adapted from Boffa, J., & Podesta, H. (2004) Partnership and risk assessment in child protection practice, Protecting Children,
19(2): 36–48. Turnell, Andrew & Susie Essex Working with Denied Child Abuse, Open University Press, 2006.
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Let’s Review and Reflect!
What have you tried from the
module last month?
What worked well?
What were your challenges?
How did you handle those
challenges?
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The Essential Question
What is the essential question of this
work?
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The Essential Question
What is the essential question of this
work?
Are the children safe?
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The Essential Question
What is the essential question of this
work?
Are the children safe?
How do we get an answer to this
question?
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Three Questions that Organize
THE INTERVIEW
What are we
worried about?
What is working
well?
What needs to
happen?
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What are we worried about?
Caregiver
Behavior
Impact on
the child
Is the impact traumatic for the child?
How do we keep that in our thoughts as we engage and interview??
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When Asking “What Are We Worried
About?”, Use Questions That…
1. Surface behavioral descriptions; move past vagueness, generalizations,
jargon.
2. Get the perspectives of all the family members, especially the children:
“If your children were here right now, what would they say worries
them?””
3. Stay connected to the heart of the interview: What is the impact of the
caregiver’s actions on the child?
4. Remember the content you need to acquire: What will you need to know
in order to make best use of the SDM tools?
Is the impact traumatic for the child?
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Generalizations vs. Behavioral
Descriptions and Impact
“She is
mentally ill.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
How do they know?
What are the caregiver behaviors are associated with it?
When do those behaviors show themselves?
How do those behaviors impact the child?
How do you know?
How do you find out?
What does the child know?
What has the child seen?
What are you worried is happening or will happen?
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Generalizations vs. Behavioral
Descriptions and Impact
“He’s an alcoholic.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What does he drink?
When does he drink?
Where is the child when he drinks?
What are the caregiver behaviors associated with it?
When do those behaviors show themselves?
How do those behaviors impact the child?
How do you know? How do you find out?
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What Is Working Well?
If we do not know “what is
working well” we cannot know
how worried to be.
Ask questions that rigorously
surface the history of
protection—and how this can
be applied to the safety of the
children going forward.
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Looking for what’s working well
Her father:
physically abusive,
dangerous
Foster
care
Past
D
V
D
E
P
R
E
S
S
I
O
N
O
F
F
Suicide attempt by gas
in the kitchen while
the children were home
M
E
D
S Poverty
Present
Future
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Looking for what’s working well
Her father:
physically abusive,
dangerous
Foster
care
Past
D
V
D
E
P
R
E
S
S
I
O
N
O
F
F
Suicide attempt by gas
in the kitchen while
the children were home
M
E
D
S Poverty
Present
Future
What is working well?
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“What Is Working Well?”
Caregiver
Behavior
Impact on
the child
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Generalizations vs. Behavioral
Descriptions and Impact
“She’s stable.”
• Stable meaning what?
• Stable from what?
• What are the caregiver behaviors associated with being stable?
• When do those behaviors show themselves?
• How do those behaviors impact the child?
Trauma?
• How do you know?
• How do you find out?
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What Needs to Happen?
“People support what
they have had a hand in
creating.”
- Margaret Wheatley
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What Needs to Happen?
ONE WAY TO BEGIN
0
Least
10
Most
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What Needs to Happen?:
SCALING to SMALL ACTION STEPS
0
Least
10
Most
On a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being “my children were in real danger when I turned on that
gas,” and 10 being “my child was always 100% safe and could never be hurt when I turned on
the gas,” where do you think things were that night?
•
Concretely, what did you do that night that is letting you give it as high a number as you
are giving it? What steps did you take to protect your children when you turned on the gas?
•
At what number would you optimally want things to be? What action would you need to
take in the future to get there? What would be the very first step?
•
What number do you imagine I (or my supervisor) think things were at that night? What
action do you think we would need to see you taking for our number to go up?
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Exercise I: Surfacing the Generalizations
We Live by Every Day
In small groups:
Make an exhaustive list of all the generalizations, labels, and generally
imprecise descriptions we use every day to describe families.
• Start by taking a piece of paper and dividing it in half—the “working
well” and the “worries.”
• Then come up with a list of all the common phrases and descriptions
we use every day about families that tell us nothing about impact!
• Keep it real!
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Exercise Part II:
Interviewing for “the Worries”
Form groups of three:
• Interviewer
• Interviewee
• Coach/observer
The interviewer should ask questions of interviewee about a family with whom
he/she or a supervisee are working, with the goal of reaching an exhaustive list of
all the worries, but they need to be described in the following format:
Caregiver
Behavior
Impact on
the child
Try not to use any of the vague or imprecise terms you just came up with!
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What Information Is Needed?
Check the relevant SDM® tool!
All information
Information
learned
Information
needed for
decision at
hand
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Exercise Part III:
Connecting With SDM®
• Choose one of those worries—perhaps the
one that concerns you most.
• Look at the SDM safety assessment and
choose the item that most corresponds to
that worry.
• Look at the definition that goes with that
item.
• In your interview, did you gather enough
details to know if you should score that
item? What else would you need to ask
about, if anything?
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Conclusions: Interviewing
Using the Three Questions
• Assessment is an interaction where the kind of relationships we have will
influence the kind of information we get.
• If people feel we are interested in them as “full people” (people who both
have “worries” and things that are “working well”) we will get better
information and be able to make better assessments.
• It is not enough to have an assessment that is solely focused on the “history
of the harm”—we also need to be as equally focused on the “history of
protection.”
• These assessments need to keep at their heart: What is the impact on the
child, and what is the information we need to get the most out of the SDM
assessments.
• When you do this, you will have a balanced, rigorous assessment.
Is the impact traumatic for the child?
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Signs of Safety Practice Element #1
Signs of Safety Practice Element #3
Understand the Position of
Each Family Member
Acknowledging a person’s posit ion is a f ast and powerf ul
way of quickly building underst anding and rapport .
Find out the service recipient’s position as to
safety and possible solutions, as well as their
position toward the worker and the agency.
position
regarding
a problem
position of family
toward agency
position about
possible solutions
“We’re doing the
best we can to
deal with him; it’s “If I tell the truth, I will
the ex-wife who
lose my child.”
keeps messing
him up.”
“I was abused like her,
and my mother never
believed me when I
told her. I’m going to
make sure she knows I
believe her.”
U nd er sta nd i ng p o si ti o n i s
equivalent to understanding
the plot in a play or story.
O nce you get it, the characters
and the action tend to make
much more sense.
p. 50 - 58
Discover Family
Strengths & Resources
★
What do you like about being a parent ? What
have you learned f rom t he experience?
★
Can you t ell me what you like about your dad?
What sort s of t hings do you like doing t oget her?
★
What do you like about your son? What would you
say he’ s good at ?
★
Who could best support you in dealing wit h t hese
problems? How could t hey help?
★
What ’ s good about your relat ionship wit h your
child/ mom/ dad/ sibling?
★
What do you t hink t hey would say is good about
t heir relat ionship wit h you?
p. 61 - 67
St rengt h quest ions
should not be seen
as an at t empt t o
minimize t he abuse.
Rat her, st rengt h
quest ions reinf orce t he
idea t hat t he f amily’s
lif e and experience f orm
a f oundat ion on which
change can be built .
Signs of Safety Practice Element #2
Find the Exceptions to the
Maltreatment
e
th
er o re
t
a
re e m e
e g th th ill
Th tail, b le n w s.
d e alu a atio r tie
v rm pa
o
ll
in f to a
be
Finding except ions t o t he abuse creat es hope
f or t he f amily and f or t he social worker.
Where no exception exists,
the worker may be alerted
to a more serious problem.
p. 58 - 61
★
“You said earlier that it’s not always like this.
Can you tell me more about the other times?”
★
“When was the last time this problem
happened? How have you managed to avoid it
since then?”
★
“Have you been in this situation before? What
did you do that helped?”
★
Can you tell me about times when this parent
has responded appropriately in keeping the
child safe? What did she do?
Exception Q uestions are instrumental in discovering
the presence of safe and constructive behaviors.
*Turnell, A. and Edwards S. (1999). Signs of Safety. New York: Norton
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One Last Thing: Thinking Ahead
In pairs:
• What is one thing you heard today that
you value or makes sense to you?
• What are you already doing to put that
into action in your work?
• What else would you like to do to “land
it” even more in your work between now
and next time?
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References
Berg, I.K. (1994). Family Based Services: A Solution-Focused Approach. New
York: W.W. Norton.
Chin, S., Decter, P., Madsen, W., & Vogel, J. (2010). Enhancing Risk
Assessment Through Organizational Learning: A Mid-Stream Report From
Massachusetts. Protecting Children, 25(3): 7–20.
Department of Child Protection. (2011). The Signs of Safety Child Protection
Practice Framework. Department of Child Protection, Perth. Retrieved from
http://www.signsofsafety.net/westernaustralia
White, M. (2007). Maps of Narrative Practice. New York: Norton.
Turnell, A., & Edwards S. (1999). Signs of Safety. New York: Norton.
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