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Title: An Integrative Model for Developing Social Work Students Communication Skills with Children and Youn


1
An Integrative Model for Developing Social Work
Students Communication Skills with Children and
Young People
  • Michelle Lefevre
  • University of Sussex

2
The Background
  • Knowledge Review completed for Scie examining
    what was known about the effectiveness of the
    qualifying social work curriculum regarding the
    teaching and assessment of communication skills
    with children and young people (Luckock, Lefevre
    Orr et al, 2006).

3
KR Research QuestionsWhat is known about....
  • the way communication skills with CYP are thought
    about and applied in social work practice, and
    about the effectiveness of this aspect of
    practice? (i.e. what should be taught)
  • the way social work educators think about, teach
    and assess communication skills with CYP and
    about the effectiveness of this aspect of
    qualifying social work education? (i.e. how it
    should be taught)
  • the way educators in allied professions think
    about, teach and assess communication skills with
    CYP? (i.e. what can we learn from others)
  •  

4
Structure of the KR
  • systematic research review in two parts
  • review of evidence re. effective communication
    skills in social work practice with CYP (218
    papers, 123 empirical).
  • review of evidence re. effective teaching and
    assessment of these skills with CYP (52 papers,
    31 empirical).
  • practice survey in two parts
  • primary survey of SW programmes of teaching and
    assessing skills with CYP (opportunistic sampling
    of 73 HEIs offering 63 UG and 31 PG programmes
    no data from NI)
  • secondary survey of allied professional education

5
Problems in defining communication skills
  • Simplistic definition
  • Should it be just micro-skills and performative
    techniques?
  • Communication an implicit and/or contested
    concept so no coherent body of research relating
    to CSSW with CYP.
  • More complex definition
  • Our advisory group defined skill as including
    personal capacity/capability and ethical
    commitment by students (ways of being) as well as
    the exercise of acquired techniques and
    approaches (doing).
  • This had implications for material reviewed

6
Key findings of the review of SW practice
  • Significant factors may inhibit communication
    between SW and CYP
  • These may stem from issues to do with the SW, CYP
    or the context - and dialectical relationships
    between these, e.g.
  • Impact of issues of race, gender, sexuality etc.
  • Childs limited vocab or conceptual understanding
  • SWs inexperience or clumsiness with children
    and/or limited knowledge of such factors
  • The SW role and task, how this makes the child
    feel and the demands of timescales etc.
  • How the SW works to mediate this is crucial, in
    particular how they see CYP, the emphasis they
    put on maximising CYP participation and how they
    make the child feel safe

7
To mediate these performative techniques and
micro-skills are needed in.
  • Giving information to CYP
  • Consulting ? inclusion, participation
  • Keeping CYP informed (verbal/written)
  • Getting information from CYP
  • Listening - to both direct indirect
    communication
  • Interviewing
  • Child-centred communication
  • Play, symbolic, creative, non-verbal and
    expressive techniques
  • Going at the childs pace, age, stage
  • Use of appropriate tools (e.g. ecomaps, rating
    scales, assessment schedules, life-story books)

8
But skilled communication is not just a matter
of technical or micro-skills. It also requires
underpinning
  • Knowledge and understanding
  • E.g. child development, impact of age, stage,
    inheritance, experience, context, methods/models,
    role and task, social actor perspective
  • Emotional and personal capacity for
  • Warmth, humour, playfulness, forming
    relationships and working with feelings,
  • Values and ethical commitments to
  • AOP, attending to childrens rights as well as
    needs, confidentiality, child-centredness,
    participation
  • See Taxonomy handout

9
These suggest domains of Being and Knowing which
underpin effective Doing for effective
communication with CYP in SW practice

Being

Knowing Doing
10
Some questions.
  • Would you agree that such elements constitute
    effective communication?
  • What is missed out?
  • How might an effective curriculum incorporate
    such elements?
  • Can they be taught in a discrete way or do they
    need a whole programme approach?
  • What is the role of practice learning?

11
Findings of the Practice Survey
  • No coherent model has yet emerged.
  • Teaching and assessment was embedded in other
    modules focusing on either generic communication
    skills or on SW practice.
  • The generic structure meant no programme could
    guarantee that a student would have the chance to
    practice and be assessed on direct communication
    with children despite the increase in practice
    learning days, even if in a childrens services
    setting not written into contracts or programme
    specs.
  • So both teaching and assessment episodic and
    fortuitous

12
No consistency re. pedagogic methods
  • Some aim for the learning of specific skills in
    the latter part of programmes to be built upon a
    foundation of core skills learned earlier
  • Direct teaching or instruction, underpinned or
    supported by interactive experiential methods,
    is the most common approach, with a philosophy of
    either
  • Skill acquisition - taking a task-centred
    approach to acquiring technical or micro-skills
    (doing).
  • A capability-building approach (most popular) -
    concentrating on the personal capacity of the
    student (being) underpinning the performance of
    any specified skill
  • Children involved opportunistically rather than
    strategically. No clear evidence on the
    effectiveness of their involvement.

13
Findings from Research Review of SW Education
  • A lack of evidence re. teaching and assessment
    methods. But we could identify contrasting
    perspectives on what counts as capability and
    skill and some indications of how each might be
    best taught
  • Studies focus on the enhancement of personal
    capability (values and emotional capacity) as
    well as the acquisition of performative skill

14
Acquiring technical skills
  • interactive/experiential methods reported,
    especially role play
  • systematic social skills training in simulated
    scenarios can facilitate understanding of core
    (counselling) skills but follow-up is needed to
    embed learning, especially through critical
    self-reflection during training and professional
    supervision of personal experience in
    practice             

15
Developing personal capability - 2 approaches
informed by 1 of 2 contrasting perspectives about
the communicative task in SW with children and
young people and about the nature of childhood
  • a psychosocial stance linked with developmental
    accounts and a therapeutic/reparative aspiration
    in sw practice
  • SW communication based in containment
    concerned with the emotional and developmental
    underpinning of a communicative and reflective
    self-capacity.
  • Taught e.g. through child observation
  • an empowerment stance linked to human rights
    approaches and an emphasis on participation and
    citizenship
  • preparing students as active participants
    learning to exemplify empowerment, models
    anti-oppressive practice.
  • E.g. Problem-based groupwork

16
In both approaches.
  • A continuing commitment to modelling as the
    context for learning
  • Critical reflection universally valued and
    experiential methods generally favoured
  • But no agreement on exactly what kind of
    capability and skill should be modelled, learnt
    and reflected upon
  • And little evidence about how learning is
    transferred into practice

17
Wider implications of the KR
  • KR exposed social work education to criticism no
    guarantee students were sufficiently prepared for
    this aspect of practice, nor assessed on it.
  • Questions about genericism vs specialism and
    basic vs advanced skills (Luckock, Lefevre
    Tanner, 2006)
  • Clearer about what should be in curriculum
  • Less evidence about pedagogical strategies
  • But indications of possible approaches
  • These imply a whole programme approach is needed
    (Lefevre et al forthcoming)

18
Four questions for today
  • Does this ring any bells for you?
  • Which teaching/assessment methods are used on
    your programme?
  • Are they effective?
  • What would be your suggestions for a 'fit for
    purpose' curriculum (bearing in mind workforce
    developments in children's services)?

19
The Sussex MA approach
  • All students must be assessed on communication
    with a child at least once in placement
  • Human Development and Social Relationships
    teaching in 1st year
  • Observation exercise (usually child) in 2nd year
  • Modelling of empowerment, containment, and
    relationship-based approaches
  • Module on Theory, Methods and Values in Practice
    in both years
  • Values, self-reflection, general counselling
    skills then focused sessions on communication
    with CYP

20
Focused sessions on communication with children
  • Combination of didactic and experiential
  • Presentation of core conditions and skills
  • Reflecting on what was learned in professional
    experience, personal values and approaches (e.g.
    boundaries, forming relationships with children)
    and personal experiences e.g. of play
  • Role playing being a normative child and a child
    service user
  • Case study

21
Evaluation of Sussex Programme
  • Evaluating student subjective views plus
    knowledge about how to plan work taking into
    account these core conditions and skills using
    vignette tool
  • Through Outcomes in Social Work Education and
    SWAP dissemination project
  • Keen to get others to join
  • M.Lefevre_at_sussex.ac.uk

22
Post-hoc evaluation
  • Students did become more confident in
    communicating with children by the end of the
    programme and showed increased knowledge of core
    conditions and skills
  • Both programme and non-programme related elements
    contributed
  • Highest importance to students focused
    communication skills teaching plus practice
    learning (programme)
  • Having personal and pre-course professional
    experience with children also felt very
    important.
  • All pedagogical methods used felt to have some
    value range of strategies needed but
    experiential methods particularly highlighted
  • No association shown between personal
    characteristics of respondents (e.g.age,
    race/ethnicity) and how much knowledge they were
    able to demonstrate in relation to the vignette
    but levels of personal and professional
    experience did
  • Prospective evaluation now under way

23
  • Lefevre, M. Luckock, B. (2007) Teaching,
    learning and assessing communication skills with
    children and young people in social work
    education. Dissemination project.
    http//www.swap.ac.uk/projects/projects06_MLBL.asp
  • Luckock, B., Lefevre, M Tanner, K (forthcoming)
    Developing Social Work Students Communication
    skills with Children and Young People a model
    for the qualifying level curriculum
  • Luckock, B., Lefevre, M. Orr, D., Tanner, K.,
    Jones, M Marchant, R. (2006) Knowledge Review
    Teaching Learning and Assessing Communication
    Skills with Children in Social Work Education.
    Social Care Institute for Excellence, London.
  • Luckock, B., Lefevre, M Tanner, K (2006)
    Teaching and learning communication with children
    and young people developing the qualifying
    social work curriculum in a changing policy
    context. Child and Family Social Work, 12 (2),
    192-201.

24
Acknowledgements
  • This workshop has developed from the findings of
    a Knowledge Review commissioned and funded by the
    Social Care Institute for Excellence but the
    ideas are those of the authors alone.
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