Youth workers are often working with people in crisis and with people who are in chronic difficulty. Youth workers have to be able to work with people who are angry, upset, desperate, overwhelmed and with people who, at times, seem like they couldn't really care. Ultimately, the major determinant as to whether a youth worker will be able to engage and assist young people at such difficult times will be the quality of the relationships they establish with young people.
Relationships with clients are the fundamental 'tool' that youth workers have. Obviously, a collaborative relationship is fundamental to successful case work with young people. The relationship provides the platform upon which everything else is built. Conducting assessments, goal setting and providing safety are all interventions that may be used within that relationship.
The 'strengths perspective' is a broad approach that is becoming more popular when working with people in difficulties. The major influence that this section shall focus on is the solution-focused approach. Traditionally, this approach is a therapeutic or counselling approach that fits with the strengths perspective and provides a number of easy to learn and easy to use tools. Solution focused techniques are a therapeutic technique developed by Steve DeShazer from the Brief Therapy Institute in Milwaukee. It has been shown to move people to change conversations and is especially useful when young people are presenting with hopeless stuck situations, difficult behaviour and relationship difficulties.
Within this section we shall focus on three specific solution-focused techniques:
- exceptions questions
- future-focused questions
- scaling questions.
Exceptions questions ask people about times things were not so bad - about the times a young person got angry but didn't smoke cannabis, about the times the young person went out drinking but made arrangements for someone else to drive their car. These questions are fundamental to the solution-focused approach. Exceptions and strengths are not in themselves guarantees of safety, however, they are both successes that we may use in engaging young people and they are indicators of things that might be able to be built on and possibly worked towards protective factors.
Future-focused questions are questions that ask young people to consider how things could be different. These questions communicate to young people the idea that things can actually be different and that helps us together build goals.
Scaling questions are very practical questions that help us talk with young people about movement - about steps towards goals and about small improvements in confidence and competence.
This approach offers techniques that may be used to assist youth workers in setting goals and facilitating change with young people. The solution-focused approach sits well against the backdrop of the strengths perspective. In contrast to the familiar 'problem-solving' approaches this approach proposes as a starting point 'the solutions' that are already present and 'the solutions' that can be envisaged.
We shall now look at each technique separately and spend some time looking at how each technique can be used within an AOD context with young people.
Exceptions questions
Exceptions questions afford the opportunity to check out what was different at the time when things were better. Examples include:
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Has there ever been a time when you could have smoked but didn't?
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Tell me of a time when you had a few drinks and then stopped?
Sometimes when young people are particularly "stuck" it is often easy for workers to feel overwhelmed. Exceptions questions recognise that no matter how bad a situation is, problems don't occur all the time. There is an assumption that, at least some of the time, people are doing something successful or something that (even in a small way) promotes safety rather than risk of harm. Even people with significant drug dependencies are not using drugs 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Any time or place where the person could have used drugs but didn't, could have hit another person but didn't - these are potential useful building blocks.
Exceptions questions are not about being unrealistically optimistic. In fact, in order to effectively engage one needs to hear the pain and the reality of another's experience and skillfully reflect this back to the individual so they "feel heard". However, if we do not move from this point then we may fail to offer our clients much hope of the possibility of change. If we enter conversations with young people and their families with a genuine open mind, in the belief that this young person is doing something right, at least some of the time.
In finding exceptions it is important to gain as much detail as possible - to really get the whole picture. There are two reasons for doing this.
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Asking about lots of detail helps us to understand whether this exception is something that can be translated into a protective factor.
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Asking about lots of detail allows the client to begin to see themselves as having done something different.
For your next shift at work in talking with a young person please utilise an exceptions question, then answer this question. (If you do not have direct client contact, or you do not feel confident asking a young person an exceptions question, imagine a situation where you might be able to utilise this style of questioning and write about it).
In what context did you use an exceptions question? What effect did it (or will it) have on assisting the young person?
Future focused questions
An integral part of our job is concerned with facilitating change through building appropriate goals with young people. In asking future-focussed questions we are assessing for the possibility of facilitating change as well as goal planning which will help us determine outcomes with the young person.
The traditional problem-solving approach starts with the problem and heads toward the goals. In this way the process, and whatever solutions it may lead to, are inextricably bedded in the problem. In the solution-focused approach, goals are how people want things to be. The future-focused aspect of the solution-focused approach says 'Let's jump straight to the solution - when things are better - find out what that will be like, then work at figuring out how best and quickest to get there'. Using this technique allows us to build a detailed picture of what 'things being better' is like, so we really know where we are heading. In the solution-focused approach, we ask clients to consider a less problem-saturated future and the process is one of building a picture of what things will be like when they are better.
Obviously, there are various questions that move clients to thinking future-focussed. One particular type of future-focussed question in the solution-focused literature is called 'the miracle question'. Ultimately, this type of question is about interviewing young people in ways that allow them to begin to picture solutions. Often, young people, their families and other agencies have been so overwhelmed and feeling hopeless, that the possibility of things being different has ceased to be a possibility. Asking a future-focussed question is concerned with re-creating a possibility.
Examples of future focused questions include:
"I want you to imagine that while you are asleep a miracle happens and this miracle is that the things you have come here about are solved"
It needs to be understood that the miracle is not that life is wonderful, you live happily ever after, you have no more problems etc. The miracle is that the reasons we came to visit you have been solved, you're not worried about your AOD use anymore, the reason you called us has been solved etc. The miracle is always defined in terms of 'why we are having this conversation'.
The follow up question then becomes:
"So what little things would you be doing differently that would show this miracle has happened?"
Obviously there needs to be a range of questions that follow this but the key question is "What else?". For example:
- What else will be happening the day after?
- What else will you be doing differently when you are feeling happier?
- What else will your mum notice?
- What else will I notice? etc.
Once a picture has been developed and is detailed enough, the youth worker may ask the young person when some of these things have already happened. For example;
"OK, so you'll be talking more with your mum. When was the last time you did that?"
What effect do you think asking these types of questions may have on young people?
Scaling questions
The final solution focused technique is called scaling questions. Scaling can be used for a range of questions.
Workers can have young people using scaling to put difficulties into perspective and to look at possible solutions:
"On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being as bad as it has gotten, how bad do you think it is?
"7"
"Was it ever an 8? What was happening then? What did you do to bring it back down to a 6?"
Workers can have young people use scaling to look at their levels of confidence:
"Let's say on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being totally easy and 10 being impossible, how confident are you in achieving the plan that you have set down? What would need to occur for you to be a 6 out of 10?"
Workers can help young people scale cravings:
"What would you rate this craving out of 10, with one being easy and 10 being impossible? Has it been an 8 all day, or gone up to there? What happened to pull it back from a 9? Has it ever been a 10? When was that? What were you doing then? How did that make things different?"
Obviously, scaling questions also provide a means for developing the future focus further. For example:
"Yes, it sounds right that you are '2' on the scale. Imagine next week when I see you you say it is a '3' on the scale. What will be happening differently then? What will you have done to move yourself from '2' to '3'?""
The advantage of this question is that it envisages a future of smaller steps towards success. For some, it is easier, and more realistic, to envisage moving from '2' to '3' than to imagine moving to '10'.
Scaling questions can also be useful to gauge the client's impression of change between conversations or days - either by reference to a previous scaling answer, or by describing the scale as 'where you were last time' and 'where you are now'. Often, clients who seemed despondent about progress 'discover' that they are doing better than they thought when asked to scale their relative positions.
For your next shift at work in talking with a young person please utilise a scaling question. (If you do not have direct client contact, or you do not feel confident asking a young person an exceptions question, imagine a situation where you might be able to utilise this style of questioning and write about it).
In what context did you use a scaling question? What effect did it (or will it) have on assisting the young person?
Solution focused techniques, much like Motivational Interviewing and the other techniques covered within this package, work with some of the people, some of the time. Utilised in isolation they are an inadequate response to what have become often deeply entrenched issues.
However, when coupled with appropriate relationship building and communication skills, a good general knowledge of young people and adolescent development, a knowledge of AOD issues, other therapeutic techniques and a program that caters well for young people, solution focused techniques can help clients create (and re-create) times when problems may not be so intrusive.contents list / about the package / quick feedback / previous page / next page
Working with Young People with Alcohol or Other Drug Issues: A self-paced learning package Published: 2006 Funded by NSW Drug & Alcohol Workforce Development Council. Written & compiled by Kristy Delaney, YAPA, and Matt Stubbs & John Howard, Ted Noffs Institute. Additional material by Nick Manning, YAPA, & by Shopfront Youth Legal Centre. Opinions are the author's.
Be careful! YAPA and the authors took reasonable care to ensure that this information was correct at the time of publishing. However health information, and government regulations, laws and standards are complex and changing. The authors may not have health, safety, or legal qualifications, and information provided is general - it is not specific health, legal or professional advice. Do not rely on it - check with other publications and authorities and if necessary get qualified, medical, legal or professional advice for your situation.
