StepWise 360: Interviewing Reluctant Adults in Child Welfare

The StepWise 360: Interviewing Adults in the Child Protection Context is an advanced workshop for child welfare practitioners who have previously completed a basic StepWise interviewing course (or equivalent).

Participants will learn the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct interviews with reluctant and hostile adult clients (such as offending and non-offending parents and foster parents) in a client-centered, strength-based, trauma-informed, and culturally-agile manner. They will gain the knowledge and skills required to reliably collect case-relevant information when investigating allegations of abuse, assessing a family’s strength and needs, or developing and monitoring family plans.

This course includes information on these and other topics:

• The role of the interview in the decision-making process

• Self-awareness: identifying and neutralizing common biases

• The dynamics of challenging behaviours and characteristics

• Developing effective, semi-structured interview plans

• Using informed consent to promote engagement in the process

• Establishing rapport and repairing relationship disruptions

• Working with a client’s reluctance and resistance within a motivational framework

• Managing problematic verbal and non-verbal behaviours

• Effectively debriefing interviews to ensure safety and promote learning