Practice Tools

The following short articles are from our team who want to share with you their ideas around a range of issues.

The Spirit of Motivational Interviewing

Margaret Robinson

Motivational interviewing is defined as “a directive, client-centred counselling style for eliciting behaviour change by helping clients explore and resolve ambivalence”.

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Tips on Motivating Reluctant Clients

Ken McMaster

Have you ever felt that you have got stuck with the people you are working with? Ever thought, what am I supposed to do here? Ever wondered what makes it so hard for this person to change ingrained patterns of behaviour? Relax, we have all been there and will in the future probably find ourselves in the same position.

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Resistance and Relationship

Margaret Robinson

“Resistance is something that occurs only within the context of a relationship or system.” This quote from Miller and Rollnick got me thinking about how often I hear clients being labelled resistant, particularly mandated or involuntary clients. It’s often said in a pejorative way. The term resistance seems to suggest that things are not going smoothly because of something one person (the client) is doing. It risks setting up an unhelpful dynamic in the interviewer-client relationship, with the client getting blamed for the resistance.

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Handy Tools for Working with Survivors

Linda Clements

After many years of working alongside women who have found and enormous amount of strength within themselves to leave, or stand up to, the monster they hated; the monster which 90% of the time lived within the man they loved; I realised that every time I referred to them as victims I was helping to reinforce the views and opinions they had of themselves.

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Are We Part of the Problem or the Solution

Linda Clements

How we approach those who have been victimised by abuse is of upmost importance. A continual question is our own pre-judgements about how we approach those who are victimed. Below are some helpful tools for us as practitioners. We can use these to continually assess our approach to all clients not just survivors.

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Assessing Risk for Women Living with Abuse

Linda Clements

If you are working with a woman who is unsure if she is being abused you may wish to use the following check list from the South Wales Police and Women's Safety Unit in Cardiff. This list should be used as a means of starting a conversation with your client.

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Assessment Within Criminal Justice

Sam Farmer

Assessments within the criminal justice setting tend to take a cognitive-behavioural approach. Professionals invite offenders to explore the influence of their cognitions (thoughts) upon their feelings and behaviours. The impact these have on subsequent thinking (and feeling) and behaviour is considered in turn.

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Preparing for the Best — Smoothing the Layer of Group Process

Sam Farmer

Everyone who has ever been involved in training groups of people will know that there are times when they don’t always get the enthusiastic, ready-to-go participants that they expect. Indeed, there are times when participants don’t always get the kind of trainer for whom they had hoped.

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