6.1 Making engagement and feedback meaningful

Peter, can we talk a little bit more about feedback? I was thinking about how, as an early social worker who has just qualified, and having to get into some of the good practices of providing and understanding the feedback. For me, I think the most important thing is that if they have that honest, and have built that real, open and truly trusting relationship, I think it will be very, very simple to understand how things are going between the social worker and the users. And I say that because I think, you know, you should then say to them, each other, that this isn’t working or that’s not working without having to really actually have any fear of any reprisals or any – because, you know, as a service user, you don’t actually sometimes disclose everything when you don’t have a complete trust in somebody. And that’s not just social work. I think, to me, to some extent that’s human nature, and until you have a full trust you are not going to disclose all your needs in this context. So, I think the first thing to do is to ensure that between you, you have that true relationship, and if you do have that, then those complexity of needs – whether that is of whatever nature – really is understood between the two of you.

Sometimes that feedback is not going to come out in necessarily in very well-articulated … It might come out quite emotionally and people can be upset, they’re difficult situations, and I think that’s when the social worker can try and unpick that and find out what’s going on, what the difficulty is, why is the service user upset about that or angry. And that will be, that can be, a kind of focal point for getting feedback. Even though it may not sound like it, that would be good feedback – to know how differently you might be approaching a situation, how you might be approaching a service user in a different way. So, I think it’s really – feedback can come in all sorts of ways and sometimes I think we’re a bit blinkered about it, you know, sort of, social workers are likely to give you a form and say, you know, ‘What did you think of me as a social worker?’ You know, tick box here kind of thing, and, you know, people sometimes are not used to doing those kind of things, so we’ve got to be encouraging social workers, I think, to be very creative about how they seek it and how – and to be open, to be open to it and not be defensive, because at the end of it, what social workers are really about is to get the best outcome for their clients.

No, I agree. And, I think just going back to how do you unpick really complex conversation, or some – or your user is sort of, you know, beginning to tell you needs that are very complex, and I think the key skills there has to be: really observe, talk and listen. But not only that, and then write down – writing skills is going to be so important. So, in a sense, what I’m saying is not just non-verbal but verbal communication along with written communication is going to be the absolute must. And I think if you become really good at that, particularly the written conversation, because these notes are not just going to be for you, for users; those notes are going to be read by other people and they have to be meaningful for them. And has to reflect and has to be understood and agreed by the user, because if you write it in a language that’s not either accessible or useable or readable by the person, it’s meaningless.

It’s another way – it’s another kind of feedback mechanism in a way for me. It’s about, you know, if a social worker has a conversation with me and I start to say some things, it’s really helpful for me, for the social worker, then to say something like ‘So, Peter, do I understand you to say that …’ or something like that, which then enables me to either say, ‘Actually, no, I didn’t quite mean that,’ or ‘Yeah, that’s absolutely right.’ And I think that can be either in verbal communication or written. And, yes, if somebody produces, you know, an official kind of report and I don’t understand it, then there’s something wrong, I think, and it needs to be, as you’re saying, in plain English and accurate because after all, if it’s not accurate, that’s going to affect the type of service that’s provided.

Yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, thinking a little bit more on feedback, I think it’s having these kinds of exchanges, you know, you have that complex conversation or conversations and then you have these written down. Quite often if you don’t, it is so clear to me that people walk away from these kinds of conversations with different messages and if it’s not written down and actually exchanged between the two people involved, you know, you could have completely different understanding. So, I think it is so important there is a feedback mechanism to just make sure, not only that as you rightly said, did I understand this? Can I clarify? Have I captured it? All of those kinds of things, but played back to make sure that the user really understands what you are saying, is accurate and reflects what they are saying. So, I agree, and that’s part of the feedback loop is to really give the user that, and I think you can then ask the users: ‘Are we on the track to achieving?’ You know, ‘Can we – how is this relationship …?’ You know, ‘Am I doing – is my performance to your expectations?’, this kind of conversation, as opposed to what I’ve seen is, you know, quite often the social worker will say, or their supervisors might send you, kind of what I call, a survey note or feedback. But it is a feedback. And so, will you mark this person? Where do you mark them one to ten? Is it a good performance, not so good? That, to me, is not as meaningful. I think that’s more a survey. For me, a meaningful feedback is really having a conversation or a written feedback, which says, ‘I really benefited because x, y, z.’.

I think there possibly are barriers that need to be overcome when people are … when social workers are looking for feedback. I think there are barriers that can be met. One I think is probably that you don’t want maybe social – service users – don’t want to upset the social worker because, you know, there is an issue about, they are the kind of gatekeepers to services, so therefore you don’t want to mess it up in any way. I think that’s definitely an issue that needs to be overcome, it’s obviously, as I have said before, defensiveness on the social worker’s part sometimes. And sometimes, maybe it’s quite an aspiration. It’s quite a high expectation that sometimes people are not used to giving detailed feedback to people, you know, people feel uncomfortable, they don’t want to be unpopular, and those kind of things can all really impact people’s ability or desire to give somebody else some meaningful feedback. And again, the feedback needs to be meaningful. I mean, I’ve seen feedback, you know, ‘How was the service? And somebody’s put ‘OK’ or ‘Yeah, it was alright.’ You know, and you think, well, that’s not really helpful at all and when those kind of things are said, I think it’s a skill of the social worker then to be able to try and bring that out, to draw out: ‘Well, you know, you said, “OK,” but, you know, can you tell me a bit more? What did you like about it? Were your goals met? Did you get the outcomes you hoped for? What was my approach like?’ You know, lots of different questions, I think, that can be offered in difficult, you know, in what are difficult circumstances, very often.

It’s amazing, really, when you really reflect back, you know, when I look back and see some of the kind of ways this feedback, and in fact, actually it goes really back to the conversation. You know, how did you actually get those issues that are really difficult to understand or even disclose? And, you know, as you just mentioned, there are some barriers. How do you overcome those barriers? And I think, actually, it goes right back up top, initially, what kind of rapport do you have with this person? And if you have not started on a good foot and, for me, building that rapport with your user is just such a basic but vitally important step in really building that relationship trust and honest, all the things that we talked about.

Very often that initial meeting people is the crucial thing because people are quite cute and will very often make, not always right, but they’ll make judgements and assumptions about a social worker, very, very, very quickly.

Interestingly enough, you know, Peter, it has reminded me of something I came across in my different kind of understanding of users and preparing to … building a rapport, and it’s this thing called ‘five Ps’. You know, I remembered this, it is: preparing prevents poor performance. You know, and it reminds me of that because I think building rapport is about back to understanding your users and if you understand, you can have those conversations in a meaningful way. Because if you go and talk to somebody with impairment, you have no idea, you are never even going to, you know, as somebody with either, say, sensory impairment of hearing loss or sight loss, and sight loss – there is no way you’re going to have eye contact with that person. So, how are you going to build that rapport? So, you know, in situations like that, you need to have some awareness of, you know, for this person, I need to have a way of communicating with touch. There’s no harm, you know, in tapping their shoulder and say this is what I’m talking about. So, I mean that really comes back again, you know, the whole thing about building rapport leads onto, you know, some of those barriers of difficulties of getting the user to open up, to disclosing really difficult needs. And I think it also then brings us back to, you know, how you make those assessments and decisions as to what those needs are. How you balance those against all those competing demands. And, you know, above all, I think it brings us back to, really, why it is important to have those key communication skills, for me. I think it’s that written skills and having that feedback loop – so important. And what that then says to me is how do you know, between you, that you have achieved your goals? And, for me, I think the only way you do that is to jointly appraise and say, ‘Did we get what we started to do?’ But you don’t do that at the end; you do that as you progress, because if you leave it until the end, it’s too late.

Yeah, I agree. And, I mean, I think it feels to me quite straightforward to say: ‘Well, you know, this is the situation that we were discussing when we first met. These were some of your needs and are we meeting some of those now? Are we moving forward with those and what else can we do?’ So, we can appraise and feedback during the process rather than, as you say, leaving it till the end when it’s too late, so you can, you know: ‘How are we doing? This is where we want to go. You know, are we going in the right direction? Do we need to change direction? Are there things we can do differently?’