Tag Archives: person-centred

Podcast Episodes, Positive Risk-Taking, Working with Risk

Podcast Episode 043: Suicide Risk [2]

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IMAG1511What role does positive risk-taking have to play when someone is experiencing and expressing serious suicidal thoughts? Firstly, we have a duty to take such expressions very seriously, but the language of suicide risk can often appear overwhelming to others, and generate great fears of what might be.

Do we respond in a way that manages the other person, manages the situation, and ultimately takes over through assuming control over and for the person? Do we really take that step backwards, and give ourselves whatever time is available to listen to the person and help them explore their options in a supported relationship? We cannot eliminate risk, but do we become overwhelmed by a fear of engaging in the real conversation?

There is no such thing as a risk-free option, and in this episode I outline a case example from my own practice that illustrates how positive risk-taking was put in place through listening and acting on what the individual has to say, identifying alternatives, and exploring strengths and potential protective factors alongside the serious expression of risk.

For the full content of this episode click on the links for iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/043-suicide-risk-2/id867043694?i=333467695&mt=2

“If it wasn’t for the possibility of suicide I would have killed myself a long time ago.” [Unknown source].

A Strengths Approach

Strengths-Based Practice

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OMOpen Mind was a fabulous social care focused magazine for which I published a number of articles between 2000-2012. The following article was first published in OpenMind 126, Mar/Apr 2004) and was reproduced with their kind permission on my website at Practice Based Evidence.

It remains just as pertinent to practice today as it ever was, so I provide the link here to the strengths-based article. It focuses on the importance of principles, and the need to change the focus of our language in health and social care services to ‘go beyond  the alphabet of negativity’…

Click to access OpenMind-StrengthsBasedPractise.pdf

A Strengths Approach

Sacred Fools

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Working-with-StrengthsAs 2014 draws to a close, and many of you take stock and use a little time to reflect, it is important to celebrate your achievements. For me, this blog and podcast show has been a pure joy to initiate and develop. However, it is underpinned by consistent strengths-based thinking, and I was particularly pleased to be able to publish ‘Working with Strengths…’ this year.

Why listen to the self-styled publicity of the author when you can take the word of an independent expert? The following are extracts from the Foreword written by my very gracious friend Professor Steve Onyett:

Radical in the sense of challenging the status quo. I love the notion of “funky” mental health services where we first break all the rules – not in a spirit of anarchy so much as in recognition of the fact that so many of our current assumptions simply don’t serve. We need more sacred fools who will run into the royal court and fart in front of the King or Queen in order to shake things up and reveal new and better ways.

There is no shortage of guidance around. There is a plethora of exhortations to be positive and focus on strengths from every direction. However, not so many get behind the rhetoric to look with clear and open eyes at how this plays out in reality. This requires that we look not just at what people say they do, but what they do do. It means that we need to look at what happens in practice and learn from that experience.

Steve Morgan is one of our greatest assets in this context. He has been at the forefront of the movement for strengths based practice in mental health services for a long time and has borne witness to both its successes and it’s disappointments. He has brought this invaluable perspective to bear here in a book that tells you pretty much everything there is to know about how things could be, while also equipping you for the stark realities of implementation in challenging contexts. He does this without judgement or cynicism, thereby leaving us with a sense of the possible and a range of first steps that we can take to make it happen. It has been said that a cynic is a passionate person that does not want to be disappointed again (Zander and Zander, 2000). Here Steve talks to the passion rather than the disappointment.

Steve is prepared for the critics
Steve is prepared for the critics

 

Podcast Episodes, Teams

Podcast Episode 038: Strengths Focused Teams

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Good teamworking, as with so many things, is easily stated and claimed, but not always so easily evidenced. Bringing people together under the name of a specific ‘team’ doesn’t necessarily mean that they function as a true team.

From a strengths perspective, Steve Morgan offers a taxonomy of strengths focused teams… looking at three different levels in relation to the degree of strengths thinking and working that are incorporated into routine teamworking. He further develops the analysis of teamworking through outlining six principles of strengths-based teams… adapted from the original strengths principles focused on how we work with service users or clients.

It is recognised that in any given team there will be individuals who function at different levels in relation to strengths-based principles and practice; however, the extensive Gallup organisation research invites us to improve our overall effectiveness and value by focusing more in a strengths way of working.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/038-strengths-focused-teams/id867043694?i=327596020&mt=2

“With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.” [Tahir Shah].

A Strengths Approach, Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 035: Care & Support Planning

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Why develop care or support plans in health and social care services? Isn’t it just another one of those bureaucratic requirements from the world of box-ticking, form-filling, audit-pleasing managerial culture? Well no it shouldn’t be; we need a thoughtful person-centred approach to the complex physical and psychological needs experienced by many people across all age groups and disabilities.

The strengths approach focuses specifically on the priorities expressed by the person through the vehicle of a strengths assessment, and these priority wishes will only become achievable goals if we put some kind of plan in place. The planning element is essentially about actions and responsibilities for actions. Within a strengths approach care or support planning is not limited to strengths-based wishes, we also need to plan for the difficulties and concerns that need to be managed. But the paperwork, paper-based or electronic, will have a role to play if we can keep it to the essential minimum amount.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/035-care-support-planning/id867043694?i=326563007&mt=2

https://soundcloud.com/stevemorgan57/035-care-support-planning

“Spontaneity is one of the joys of existence, especially if you prepare for it in advance.” [Alan Dean Foster].

Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 032: Why plan?

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2This episode raises the philosophical question of ‘why plan?’, and what role does planning play in our day-to-day lives? We all have needs and wants, and it is the conscious or subconscious plans that help us to exert some control in our aim of achieving them.

We engage in relationship plans, financial goals, career planning, and chosen uses of leisure time. It is a natural human activity that can become quickly mired in the bureaucratic jargon of goal-setting, care planning, support planning, where we talk of being person-centred when our systems are imposing service-centred solutions on people.

It can be a conflict between a requirement for order and a way of managing chaos, even though some people claim to prefer chaos. Plans can’t guarantee success but they can help to build confidence, apply order and structure, focus our energy, provide a road map. In the event of a crisis we have means of responding with our own personal crisis plans; and in anticipation of something desired going wrong we should have some kind of contingency plans.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/032-why-plan/id867043694?i=322813027&mt=2

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” [Alan Lakein].

A Strengths Approach, Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 031: Say hi to Dave

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Dave is a reported case example (not interview) of someone advancing in age and who is not only coming to terms with complex health problems, but is also adamant about exerting his own views of what a plan for his life should look like when in contact with health care professionals.

Dave has recently lost his wife in a road traffic accident, and his children are concerned about his care needs as he is now diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. Dave puts his strengths to work, using skills he has developed over many years as a financial advisor, as well as his passion for reading up about his condition and the way services should work for him, not making him fit into a standard bureaucratic process. He challenges his local services to be genuinely person-centred and flexible in the way they meet with him, listen to him, and document his wishes. He also makes it very clear that he will not become a token gesture to service user involvement by refusing an invitation to join a local strategic committee.

To access the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/031-say-hi-to-dave/id867043694?i=321218937&mt=2

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” [Gabriel Garcia Marquez].

A Strengths Approach, Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes, Podcast Interviews

Podcast Episode 028: Toby Williamson Interview Part 1

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Toby Williamson works for the UK Mental Health Foundation in the role of Head of Development & Later Life, and is extensively published particularly around the subjects of Values and Mental Capacity. Here he talks about what we mean by ‘values’ in mental health practice, borrowing a phrase from Professor Bill Fulford who describes them as ‘action guiding words’.

He explores the importance of values diversity, reflected particularly in the expectations of how we set up multidisciplinary teams. Toby draws on examples from his previous role managing Impact, an assertive outreach team developed in the voluntary sector services run by Mind in Hammersmith & Fulham (west London).

Toby and Steve also reflect on the conflict between person-centred values upheld by the majority of public service practitioners, and the commercial values slowly creeping into UK public services in recent years.

To access the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes or Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/028-toby-williamson-interview/id867043694?i=319964730&mt=2

A Strengths Approach, Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 027: Identifying values

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2What are values?

This episode highlights the importance of reflecting on these largely unseen influences on everything we think, we do, we decide, they inform our core beliefs, they are the sum of who we are. Nothing more than that! So, if they have such a significant influence we would be well advised to be more aware of what they are.

They come dressed up in almost endless lists of good words, but this episode argues for spending more time examining the impact they have on the ways we behave and act in particular situations. Steve Morgan poses a series of questions to help us explore our underlying values, offering examples from his own experiences by way of illustration.

Core personal and corporate values are contrasted, and examples are identified of where conflicting values can contribute to better decisions, or even disasters. As a strengths approach, the examination of values is one way of demonstrating how we are putting genuine person-centred practice into action.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/027-identifying-values/id867043694?i=319716735&mt=2

“Living in a way that reflects one’s values is not just about what you do, it is also about how you do things.” [Deborah Day].

A Strengths Approach, Podcast Episodes, Podcast Interviews

Podcast Episode 022: Wanda Rusiecki Interview Part 1

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Wanda Rusiecki has been working in ‘intensive case management’ services in New York State for 25 years, supporting some of the most vulnerable people experiencing mental health problems within the state system. Wanda describes her experiences working intensively with small caseloads of people with very complex problems, who require a stronger degree of linking and co-ordinating of services as well as more creative ways of engaging trusting working relationships.

Wanda’s reflections pick up on her value base that emerged from childhood as a theme for connecting with those who present as different. She identifies the importance of ‘strengths’ in her own approach of developing the conversation and listening more through ‘looking for the healthy side of people’. Wanda identifies the characteristics of what makes for a good case manager and what has sustained her to stay in this line of work for the long-term, as well as the challenges that the ‘system’ presents when trying to deliver best practice. The true meaning of ‘recovery’ is identified through eliciting each individual to tell their own story and identify their own priorities.

To hear the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/022-wanda-rusiecki-interview/id867043694?i=318296261&mt=2

https://soundcloud.com/stevemorgan57/022-wanda-rusiecki-interview