Tough Conversations™ in Child Protection

ONE-DAY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Assisting effective parenting capacity conversations for workers in the Child Protection System

A solution based on proven techniques

Tough Conversations in Child Protection is a one-day course for child protection professionals and family workers to help them to hold the often-challenging conversations with parents in child protection. The origin of these child protection workshops arose from a similar series of workshops already being held nationally for school principals. The workshop helps busy professionals to quickly assess and prepare for tough conversations in situations where clarity-of-message can make all the difference for vulnerable families.

The course teaches a method to:

Identify and clearly articulate the strengths and deficits in parents’ caring capacity so that parents have a clear future work plan.
Comprehensively gather information for holding a factual tough conversation so that as many facts (as can be reasonably gathered) can be brought to bear in conversations with parents.
Defuse antagonism during a tough conversation while holding a firm line.
Identify the important ‘dashboard’ markers for parents so that everyone has clarity about what is expected within a given timeframe.

Lesson Framework

Why people overreact.
Self-control factors in adults and young people.
How ‘frustration tolerance’ develops in people.
What to tolerate: sorting out what to let go and what needs your attention.
What people will do if you challenge them.
A step-by-step process to address a problem.
How to tame tigers: effectively dealing with offensive behaviour.
A video demonstration of the concepts applied to a tough conversation between a child protection worker and a parent.