Effective Engagement with Parents & Carers

Background:

Communicating effectively with parents is essential for enabling families to understand and engage with practitioners. This course aims to support practitioners to feel more confident in this task. It provides an opportunity to stand back from the detail of the work and reflect on how we engage in productive relationships with parents whilst keeping the safety and wellbeing of the children and young people central to our work. It also provides the opportunity to explore some of the barriers to successful engagement and different approaches which can help.

Training Level:

3

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the 1 day course the learners should be able to:

• Describe what is meant by engagement and therefore, what is meant by “effective engagement with parents”
• Describe the variety of ways in which families do not engage and co-operate and hypothesise about why families may exhibit difficulties in engaging
• Understand the difference between real engagement and disguised compliance
• Recognise the barriers that working with difficult to engage families causes in keeping the child at the centre of the work
• Explore what we can do to help or hinder effective engagement
• Know how to use positive interviewing skills
• Be confident enough to progress risk assessments whilst working to facilitate change and improve engagement
• Develop the skills to manage and diffuse highly charged and difficult situations

Training Materials:

Slides, handouts and scenarios