Reviewed Piece of SF work: Carey Glass

Using SF to Create Whole System Change in Social Care

The Client wished to implement the Government’s vision of putting clients with social care needs in control of services to maintain their independence and build capacity in the community to meet low level needs. At the end of the candidate’s work, the culture had moved from creating dependency to respecting people’s independence, working in partnership with people in the community to find solutions. This was starting to be reflected in changes in documentation within the public sector. Significant inroads had been made to connect more effectively with the needs of the community and engage them as key players in creating change. Structural changes occurred in the bureaucracy to enable flexible and responsive developments to suit the needs of the population. The work was reviewed on 2 May 2013. A case study is being submitted for InterAction describing the work.

Client Quotes:

“The work helped shape my understanding of the agenda, challenge my way of thinking and the approach I took. It allowed us to develop a relationship that helped us achieve a very well formed and effective shared understanding of a very complex agenda.”

Candidate’s Summary:

This review looked at a part time consultancy over 5 years in the public sector in health and social care and considered the degree to which you could extend SF beyond its traditional uses. An illuminating discussion ensued around the differences that made the difference to enable serious change from the coal face through to the governing Boards. Some of the critical features identified were:

• Having a passionate individual at the top who cares about the moral agenda as much as you do and is not scared to act.
• The huge ripple effects of making small and very practical changes in the use of language and documentation at the coal face to enable different interactions with clients.
• That seeing real change encouraged the various Board’s to restructure themselves towards the interests of clients and the community.
• The sense of worth that developed amongst staff.
• Clarity of thinking about the populations within and outside the organisation which needed to be engaged to enable change and the processes to embed change.
• The flexibility to work within complexity using and balancing what emerged usefully or less usefully with purposeful goal-oriented partnerships with the client.
• Grit and determination to hang in there.

My thanks to John Brooker and John Wheeler for the amount of personal thought and time put into the review. It is much appreciated.

Reviewers Summary:

What impressed me greatly about this piece of work was Carey’s sheer determination to deal with such a complex situation, with such enthusiasm, even when things went wrong outside of her control. The work abounds with SF clues and is a testimony to her ability as an SF consultant and facilitator. Some highlights of the work for me were:

• The renewed sense of worth the call centre operators obtained from Carey’s skilful use of SF and her guidance on the questions to ask clients.
• Finding ways to adopt SF in the smallest ways e.g. changing the checklist
• Moving SF in to the community
• Changing the procurement documentation to include SF guidelines

Second Reviewer:

I was struck by Carey’s ability to trust the process of Solutions Focused conversation to bring about change at all level’s of the service user’s experience – greater independence for the service users, greater strengths based collaboration between service staff who took telephone calls about people, greater personalisation of the documentation in which the identities and stories of service users were constructed and the ability of a key manager to transform his vision for service delivery into changes that made significant differences to the service users. In particular I was impressed by Carey’s ability to sit with complexity and uncertainty until useful ways forward emerged.

• Lead Reviewer: John Brooker
• Second Reviewer: John Wheeler

About The Candidate:

Carey Glass helps organisations change by working in close partnership with its individuals. She believes that it is ultimately the actions and intentions of individuals on their own merit and with others that create change and works at that level to make visions happen. She runs her own consultancy, is a Chartered Psychologist in the UK, a Member of the Australian Psychological Society, has various publications and is an Editor of InterAction Journal.