Facilitating Change
Through Decision
Making
Chapter 7
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 In social work, the thoughtful and planned efforts to
bring about a specific change are called
interventions.
 They are designed to alter some specified condition,
pattern of behavior, or a set of circumstances that
affects social functioning.
 Planned change is accurately described as a
process: a planned series of actions directed toward
a specific end.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 Given the complexity of change, change
efforts can easily come apart and movement
toward a goal can easily be derailed.
 Change efforts must be painstakingly
assembled and built little by little, piece by
piece.
 They must be constantly supported,
nurtured, restarted, repaired, and rebuilt.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 An intervention will usually have both expected and
unexpected outcomes.
 Change – even if wanted and planned – is often
difficult and frustrating.
 Some degree of conflict, accompanied by emotion,
can be expected during periods of change.
 Change may provoke personal turmoil and discord
between the people and groups affected by the
change.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 Resistance to change is also a characteristic of
humans and their social systems. People tend
toward preserving the status quo.
 Closely related to resistance is ambivalence, which is
a condition of both wanting and not wanting a
particular change.
 The social worker must be alert to the forces of
ambivalence and, when necessary, assist the client in
working through this block to decision making and
action.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 Helping clients sort through their perceptions of the
risks and rewards associated with change is another
important social work activity. If the potential rewards
far outweigh the risks, most clients will attempt the
change.
 Success in making change is largely a function of the
client’s motivation to change, capacity for change,
and opportunity to change.
 Motivation, which can be viewed as a state of
readiness to take action, consists of the pull of hope
and the push of discomfort.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 Change requires a balance between hope and
discomfort.
 If people have hope but no real discomfort, they tend
to give up when they encounter the stress and
conflict associated with making change.
 If they feel discomfort but have no hope they will see
little reason to work at changing what they perceive
as unchangeable.
 A client can be highly motivated toward one action
while having little or no motivation toward another.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 A meaningful and useful description of a
client’s motivation must be tied to some
specified goal or action rather than being
viewed as a personal trait or characteristic.
 Capacity can be thought of as the various
abilities and resources that clients or other
people in the client’s environment bring to the
change process.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 These capacities include time, energy,
knowledge, experience, self-discipline,
optimism, self-confidence, communication
skills, problem-solving skills, money, political
power, and so on.
 Different types of change require different
types and combinations of capacity.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 Change further requires opportunity: various
conditions and circumstances within the
client’s immediate environment that invite and
support positive change.
 Some environmental factors encourage
change while others are barriers to change.
Elements of the Planned Change
Process
 When a social worker becomes involved in the
change process as a facilitator of planned change,
they bring professional resources and knowledge to
the client’s motivation, capacities, and opportunities.
 The role of the social worker in helping people make
change can be conceptualized as taking action and
applying knowledge and skills designed to increase
motivation, expand capacity, and create or uncover
opportunities for change.
The Context of Planned Change
 Whether the social worker’s client is an
individual, a family, a group, an organization,
or a community, the client’s concern or
problem always exists within a wider context.
 A multitude of social, economic, cultural, legal
and political factors are known to affect client
functioning in some way and to some degree.
The Context of Planned Change
 Reality demands that the client and social
worker narrow their focus and zero in on
those aspects of the total situation that can be
changed, given the client’s motivation,
capacity, and opportunity, and the resources
that the social worker can bring to bear on the
situation.
The Context of Planned Change
 The term client situation is used to describe that
segment of the client’s total existence, experience,
and circumstances that are the focus of the planned
change effort.
 The observed situation is the client’s situation as
observed by people in the client’s environment and
perhaps described by professionals using commonly
understood terminology, categories, and
classifications.
The Context of Planned Change
 The perceived situation is the situation as it is
felt by and uniquely interpreted and
subjectively constructed by the client.
 The situation as perceived by the client may
be significantly different from the client’s
situation as understood and interpreted by
the social worker and others in the client’s
environment.
The Context of Planned Change
 The importance of the client’s perceived situation to
the change process is recognized in the social work
axiom, “Start where the client is.”
 It is necessary for the worker to understand the
client’s concern and situation from the client’s
perceptions and subjective interpretations and
consider their implications for facilitating change.
 It is this element of subjectiveness that makes it so
difficult to predict how clients will respond to a given
intervention.
The Context of Planned Change
 The concept of the social work practice situation
encompasses both the client situation and the
contextual factors that determine the worker’s
decisions and actions.
 What the worker does is shaped by agency purpose,
policy and procedure, practice frameworks and the
worker’s skill, workload, and commitment to social
work values and ethics.
The Context of Planned Change
 Guidelines for social work practice:
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The social worker must give primary attention
to the client’s problem or concern as it is
defined, perceived, and experienced by the
client.
The worker must focus primarily on those
aspects of the situation and the client’s
environment that most immediately and
directly affect the client.
The Context of Planned Change
 Guidelines for social work practice:
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The intervention must address those aspects
of the situation over which the client and/or the
worker have some control and influence.
The social worker must recognize the
multitude of forces pushing and pulling on the
client but understand that the actual impact of
those forces is at least partially dependent on
the client’s subjective interpretation.
The Context of Planned Change
 Guidelines for social work practice:
 The worker must be prepared to intervene at one or
more levels depending on the nature of the client’s
concern, the client’s interpretation of the situation, what
the client wants to do about it, and what the client can
reasonably expect to be able to do about it.
 The worker must be prepared to use a variety of
techniques, approaches, and services since whatever
is done must make sense to the client, given their
perceptions and interpretations of reality.
Factors Affecting the Client’s Need for
Change
 Individual Change:
 To cope with a crisis (old patterns no longer
work and the individual is pushed by
circumstances to develop new ways of
functioning).
 To better cope with physical or emotional pain
or illness or physical limitations.
 To adjust to changes that have occurred within
family, work, or school environments and life
circumstances.
Factors Affecting the Client’s Need for
Change
 Individual Change:
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To learn more effective and more socially
acceptable ways of behaving and coping with
responsibilities and problems.
To resolve uncomfortable dissonance between
one’s values and one’s behavior.
Factors Affecting a Client’s Need for
Change
 Family and Group Change:
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To adapt to the addition or loss of members,
necessitating new patterns of communication,
decision making, daily routines, and so on.
To cope with the changes made by other
individuals or subgroups within the system.
To adapt to changing social and economic
realities.
Factors Affecting the Client’s Need for
Change
 Organizational Change:
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To bring the organization’s accomplishments
more in line with its stated mission and goals.
To make better use of personnel.
To introduce new technology.
To adapt to increases or decreases in fiscal
resources.
To respond to powerful external factors.
Factors Affecting the Client’s Need for
Change
 Community Change:
 To adjust to shifts in demographics.
 To adapt to changes in the economic base of the
community.
 To cope with shifts in dominant values, political climate,
and political power.
 To cope with changes in personal interaction and travel
patterns caused by such factors as relocation of
highways, zoning changes, new housing developments
 To respond to a crisis (flood, earthquakes, riots).
Identifying the Actors in Planned
Change
 Change agent system: The social worker and the worker’s
agency.
 Client system: The person, group, or organization who has
requested the social worker’s or agency’s services and expects
to benefit from what the worker does.
 Target system: The person, group, or organization that needs to
change and is targeted for change in order for the client to
benefit from the intervention .
 Action system: All the people, groups and organizations that the
change agent system works with or through in order to
influence the target system and help the client system to
achieve the desired outcome.
Phases of the Planned Change Process
 An intervention or a planned change typically
moves through several sequential phases,
with each phase building on previous ones.
 If the social worker is to guide the change
process, they must become an expert
regarding the tasks that must be
accomplished at each phase.
Phases of the Planned Change Process
 Phases of planned change:
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Identify, define, and describe the client’s
concern, troublesome situation, or problem.
Collect additional data needed to better
understand the client’s concern or situation
and its context.
Assess and analyze the concern and situation
and decide what needs to change, what can
be changed, and how it might be changed.
Phases of the Planned Change Process
 Phases (continue):
 Identify and agree upon the goals and objectives to be
achieved by the process of planned change.
 Formulate a relevant and realistic plan for reaching the
goals and objectives.
 Take action based on the plan
 Monitor progress of the intervention and determine if it
is achieving the desired outcomes and if not, modify
the plan and try again.
 Once goals and objectives have been reached,
terminate the intervention and evaluate the change
process.
Phases of the Planned Change Process
 Change rarely proceeds in an orderly fashion; rather,
it is more of a spiral, with frequent returns to prior
phases for clarification or a reworking of various
tasks and activities.
 It is helpful to be clear about where the client is in the
process of change, because the worker draws on
somewhat different techniques to accomplish the
tasks of each phase.
 What is helpful in one phase might be ineffective or
even counterproductive in another.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 The social worker’s skill of critical thinking are
essential to guiding the process of planned
change.
 Critical thinking involves consciously thinking
about how we do our thinking.
 The critical thinker adheres to principles of
logic and is alert to the many tendencies and
foibles that arise to erroneous and superficial
thinking.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Skills of critical thinking include:
 Clarifying and defining key terms and
concepts and using them in a consistent
manner.
 Determining the credibility of an information
source.
 Differentiating relevant from irrelevant
information.
 Distinguishing between verifiable and
unverifiable claims and statements.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Skills of critical thinking (continue):
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Checking the accuracy of a statement or
claim.
Recognizing proper and improper use of
statistics.
Separating thoughts and logic from emotions
and feelings.
Identifying biased, ambiguous, irrelevant and
deceptive arguments.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Skills of critical thinking (continue):
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Recognizing logical fallacies and
inconsistencies in an argument or line of
reasoning.
Reaching conclusions about the overall
strength of an argument or conclusion.
Critical thinking requires self-discipline.
It requires that one takes charge of their
mental processes.
Critical Thinking of Planned Change
 Critical thinkers are honest with themselves,
acknowledge what they do not know, recognize their
limitations, and are watchful for errors in their own
thinking.
 Critical thinkers strive for understanding, remain
patient in the face of complexity, are willing to invest
the time needed to get the facts, and carefully
analyze an issue in order to achieve clarification and
overcome their confusion.
Critical Thinking of Planned Change
 Critical thinkers set aside personal preferences and
base their judgment on evidence, defer judgment
whenever evidence is insufficient, and revise their
judgments and conclusions when new evidence
reveals a need to do so.
 Critical thinkers are genuinely interested in ideas, and
they read and listen attentively, even when they
disagree with what others are saying.
Critical Thinking of Planned Change
 Critical thinkers recognize that extreme views
(whether conservative or liberal) are seldom
correct, and they seek a balanced view.
 Critical thinkers practice self-discipline,
control their feelings rather than being
controlled by them, and think before acting.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Unclear and uncritical thinking results in two
types of errors:
Believing something is true when it is false.
 Believing something is false when it is true.
Wisdom suggests that it is best to define truth in
terms of probability.
A truth is a statement that has a high probability
of being accurate and for which there is
currently insufficient reason to challenge or
doubt.
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Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 A critical thinker recognizes that all ideas are
essentially human inventions. They are mental and
social constructions that attempt to describe and
explain perceptions and understandings at a given
point in time.
 The critical thinker understands that our perceptions
and ways of understanding are always incomplete
and likely to shift as we have new experiences,
acquire more information, and experiment with new
ways of interpretation.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Critical thinking requires an ability to distinguish
between a fact, an assumption, an opinion, and a
value.
 A fact is a statement of what is or of what happened
that can be independently verified by empirical
means.
 An assumption is an idea that is taken for granted or
presumed for the sake of making an argument but is
recognized as possibly untrue or inaccurate.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 An opinion puts forward one particular
interpretation or viewpoint when it is
understood that other credible interpretations
are also possible.
 A value is a strongly held belief concerning
what is truly worthwhile, right or wrong, and
the way things are supposed to be.
 It is also useful to distinguish between
information, knowledge, and wisdom.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Information refers to a more or less random
collection of concepts, facts and opinions.
 Knowledge refers to an orderly and coherent
arrangement of relevant and trustworthy
information related to a specific topic.
 Wisdom refers to a higher level of knowledge
that has a truly lasting quality.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 These distinctions help us realize that a person can
possess much information but lack real knowledge.
 Also, a person can be very knowledgeable on a topic
but lack wisdom.
 The critical thinker is aware of their capacity for selfdeception.
 We believe what we want to believe and what is
convenient and comfortable for us to believe.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 Another aspect of our capacity for self-deception is
our tendency to find what we are looking for, whether
or not it is really there.
 We tend to look harder for evidence that supports our
views than for evidence that refutes it.
 Human are quite suggestible and we often mistake
our feelings and emotions for thought and logic.
Critical Thinking in Planned Change
 An important dynamic giving rise to uncritical
thinking is our desire to be right and to have
others believe we are right.
 That is why people become defensive when
their beliefs are questioned.
 The more fragile the self-esteem, the more
likely we are threatened by new ideas; the
more likely we are also to uncritically accept
ideas proposed by others.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 Decision making is the activity of consciously
choosing among available options.
 A social worker must be able to make difficult
decisions and do so with a conscious
awareness of the logic being used.
 Conclusions and decisions should be based
on solid evidence.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 Evidence refers to objects or information presented to
the human senses for the purpose of supporting or
refuting a particular argument.
 Powerful evidence consists of relevant and reliable
facts and figures, unbiased observations and logical
arguments.
 Examples of weak evidence are opinions, hearsay,
and statements offered by people who have an “axe
to grind” or something to gain personally from the
outcome.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 Tendencies that can give rise to bad decisions:
 Tendency to pay most attention to information that one
finds interesting, dramatic, or exciting.
 Tendency to reject or overlook information that conflicts
with one’s own beliefs, feelings, preconceived notions,
and personal values.
 Tendency to assign greatest value to that information
with which one is most familiar and finds easiest to
grasp and understand.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 Tendencies of bad decisions (continue):
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Tendency to assign greatest value to
information that was either the first or the most
recently heard on the topic.
Tendency to assign greatest value to
information that is easiest to obtain and to
disregard or devalue information that would be
more difficult to obtain.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 When faced with an especially difficult decision, the
social worker should seek consultation and advice
from experienced and informed colleagues and
recognized experts.
 “Many heads are better than one”.
 The social worker must be aware of the phenomena
termed group-think, tendency to accept or reject a
certain choice or option because of how others in
one’s group, agency or profession think about the
issue.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 A common error in decision making is to overlook
some of the available options.
 It is important to consider seriously all possible
alternatives before making a decision.
 All too often, decisions are made for the purpose of
justifying a past action or prior decision. When
making a decision, one should give priority to the
present situation and to current arguments and data.
Decision Making in Planned Change
 When faced with complexity and uncertainty, humans
are inclined to oversimplify the question or issue with
which they are struggling in order to feel more secure
and less anxious.
 It is important to guard against being pushed into a
premature decision by the pressure of time.
 Decisions made in haste can result in additional
problems and cause harm.