An interview with Rob Tucker: Effective Communication Skills with children (EP.20)

This week I interview Rob Tucker, Director and Independent Social Work Consultant at RGT Training and Consultancy Ltd.

He is one  of the most impressive and inspiring social workers I have met. I wish every social worker had the chance to learn from Rob about communication skills with children. In my view, he is unparalleled in his knowledge, skill and has an infectious passion for the work. If you want to get in touch with Rob, you can reach out to him on his Linked-in Page. I couldn't recommend him highly enough. 

BASW Child Protection Master Class Series:
https://www.basw.co.uk/basw-child-protection-masterclass-series

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Any questions please contact me on richdevinesocialwork@gmail.com

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Transcript

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Hi. Look into which device social work practice, poke class. Hey step by wrench. Odd. It was essential worker. His podcast is about practice related issues, self development and transformation. It will give you knowledge, ideas and practical tools for being a fantastic social worker, supporting you of assessment skills. Direct work, dealing with conflict. And importantly, helping you make a positive difference in the lives of children and families. So today I'm joined by Rob Tucker, and I was just explaining to Rob before we started reporting that I had Rob, Rob came to the local authority where I was working about 10 years ago and delivered some training on communicating with children and young people. And it, it was by far some of the most powerful and effective training that I'd ever attended in Complet. Changed the way I undertook direct work with children and young people. So I'm kind of super excited that, that you are here today, Rob, with, by, by way of introduction, could you. tell us a little bit about your background and how you've ended up being focused on direct work with children and young people. Yeah, yeah. Thanks Richard, and thanks for inviting me on today. Yeah, I come from a social work background. Been doing it for over 30 odd years. Started off. Probably one of the most important jobs. I started off working with kids in residential care and play schemes and things like that. Then got involved as an assistant social worker in London, which was an exciting period where, I was learning a lot about social work and, and after training, I then went to work in structure for a number of years. So worked in short-term teams, long-term teams, children, disability teams, and eventually worked in a designated child protection team. What we'd now be talking about safeguarding teams, really getting involved in section 47 investigations and assessments and doing the video interviews alongside the police. These were the years where, The children could choose who they wanted to talk to. So I gained a lot of experience there in terms of the evidential interviewing, and then moved from local authority work to work for. A charity locally an agency called sac, which stood for the sexual abuse child consultancy service. And that's where I probably met the person that had the biggest influence on my communicating with children. A woman called Mad Bray, someone I know you've read her book. And she was quite an innovator in the field about working, using therapeutic and counseling techniques to get alongside children to enhance our communication abilities. Really, and so I was doing therapeutic work with children who were coming into foster or residential care, very young ages, and they'd experienced child sexual abuse or sexual behavior problems. So I worked there for a number of years. And that's where I developed some of the training ideas that I pinched from Mag or she, she taught them for us to go and to, to teach others. So some of the training that I still do and the training you came along owes itself very much a lot to the, the influence of madre. Then I went to work for the Lucy Faithful Foundation. Mm. Which is a charity that specializes in child sexual abuse. So was there working with children on the receiving end of sexual abuse. Either they've been abused themselves or they've been living in families affected by abuse. Or allegations of abuse. And then I was working with the whole family system as well, with other colleagues that were working with other offenders. And that was another period of my career where my whole thinking about communication changed. I, I changed my whole way of communicating to start thinking about, I wonder what it's like being a child. on the receiving end of the dynamics of an offender or a non-offending partner. So what is it that the adults do, and how does that impact upon children? How that affects their thinking, their thoughts and their behaviors. And as soon as I started thinking about what we call implanted knowledge from the offender, I started thinking, I wonder how I need to work with this child in order to get alongside them and get into their world. So I did that for, you know, 12, 13 years and, and. But the last number of years I've been working independently, so I carry on now doing work. Some of my work continues to specialize in sexual behavior, young children's behavior, adolescents, harmful behavior, working with children who are on the receiving end of sexual abuse. But, but I also do a lot of other stuff now locally. I do a lot of post-adoption support, so I do a lot of therapeutic life story work, working with kids on their narrative. And I think that's the theme that goes through my career is trying to think. how you translate ideas into words that children can understand and how you can explain things to children in a way that they can then help them and their families move forward. So that's what I'm doing at the moment, working independently, doing a variety of adoption support therapy, lifestyle work, and sexual abuse work, really. Yeah. And just to kind of start with a bit of a, a kinda matter question, what, why should we communicate with children? But why is it important that we offer children that the opportunity to be able to share their thoughts and their feelings and what's occurring for them? I know it kind of seems obvious now, but as I was just saying before we came on, when, when I was reading Matt Bras book briefly before we spoke as a way of revising the training and what we, what we looked at those those years ago, it was, it wasn't until relatively recently that children's views. Thought of as something that we should value and that we should acknowledge. And then, and then I suppose ultimately became enshrined in policy and law. It is in many respects you could say it's, it's, it's quite recent in terms of practice. I mean, you read the history children have been have, there have been lots of people who've been doing direct work with children and communicating with children, but it's, it's, it's, it's not been the norm. I. and answer your question. I, I think about from a social work perspective, what is it that we as social workers are really grounded in both historically, but nowadays? If you think about it now, we talk about the f the, the, the framework we use for children when we do assessments, you know, everyone gets taught the triangle and we talk about the parental capacity and the child's developmental needs and the environmental factors. And I find it fascinating. E even still today, when Let me go back. The first assessment framework ever came across was the Orange book, which was a comprehensive assessment for children and families. They called it the Orange Book, and it was a really, you know, a, a good sru fr structure and framework for looking at things. But I remember when I was training as a social worker writing an essay on it, and the first thing I wrote is, there is no chapter that tells you about communicating with children. Mm-hmm. they've got all these questions they ask parents. Nothing there that there were suggestions. There were little hints, but it wasn't there. And then we went to the, the, the, the framework and the doing core assessments that now become single assessment child, family. and I remember I was involved in the social work team early in my career. That was that was piloting core assessment framework. And I remember then at the time I made the same point. We've got this lovely assessment framework, but there's all we've got, there's nothing that says what we do with the child. And, and now I look cons. I go and do, I carry on doing training around the country. And I talk to people now with very much, we're using computers and we're using our technological based assessments, and we are writing assessments. And I often ask about the recording of children's views, and people often say to me, well, there's that section at the end that says child's views. Mm-hmm. And to me that encapsulates the attitudes that I think we've often had is that we've got lo we write, when you look at a report, there's loads of things written about what the parents have told us or what the professionals have. But when it comes to the child, we've got this small little thing about child's children's and wishes. Yeah. And I, when I'm training, I'm thinking, well, if we're asking parents about housing, why aren't we asking the child if we're asking children about money and finance as a pressure in the holistic assessment, why aren't we asking children about the money in the family or pocket money? So when I do training, I say when you write those assessments where you've got those boxes that you put. Is the child quoted in every single box in an assessment. And of course people look at you blankly and they're saying, well, no, we have a little bit at the end that we write. And I make the point that are we doing. Family assessment or are we doing a parenting assessment where we are just getting the views of the parents? Mm-hmm. and I think the, the assessment is supposed to be an ecological assessment that looks at the whole of the family environment. Surely the child should have equal weight in the assessment process compared to the parents. I then ask the people the question, how many hours have you spent in interviews with the parents when you've gone visits? Mm-hmm. And then I asked them to tell me how many hours have they spent with a child. And it's quite easy to do that comparison. And I'm saying again, is it an adult led or a child led assessment? So from a purely. So egalitarian point of view, I think that children have become marginalized or they've always been marginalized within the system. Mm-hmm. I think you only have to look back at, it's a really good, it's an old book now, but I remember a book by reader and Duncan that that does an analysis of a lot of child abuse inquiries and child death inquiries. And one of the, the, the, the, the, the themes that comes out in lots of child death. Is how often the child's voice is minimized, has not been gathered. And a theme of many inquiries is the child has not been spoken to. And I often get asked to go in to do communicating with children courses usually a couple of years after there's been a big inquiry in a department where you've had there because virtually every single Report that's written in terms of a serious case review often has a recommendation, but we didn't see the child. We need more training we do about seeing children, and this has been happening for 30 odd years. It's not a new thing. It's just a, a thing that children generally, we tend to marginalize and I think in a very busy world and. and although I've been out of the statutory of social work for a while, I'm still working with them, but the themes are still the same. We're very busy a lot of time, both demands on our time, a lot of reports to write. It's very easy. For the most important part of our work, I think the most important part of our work, which is to talk to children, is the bit that gets shoved to the side. But then when I talk social workers, particularly those that are at the beginning of their career, Many of them have become social workers cause they like the idea of working with children and working with families and helping mm-hmm. and, and then quite quickly in the system that sort of gets lost. And I love it when you get new workers or you get experienced workers who look back and say, the most important thing I ever done was sitting down with a drink with a child and talking to them. And I'm towards the end of my career now, I suppose the latter days. My career, I've had choices to make about whether or not I want to do consultations, do training, do conferences, and all those sorts of things. I'm coming back to what I wanna do in my remaining social work years is spend time talking to kids. I love it. Mm-hmm. And I think there's that. I love it when you hear people with that enthusiasm. So I think why should we talk to them? They are our clients. And they have a view and we have a right to ask them. And I think if we are gonna be making decisions and making recommendations about their lives, it's incumbent upon us to include them in that process. What, what do you think are some of the challenges for social workers to communicating with children? I know you've alluded some of the like organizational pressures. Are there any other challenges that you've noticed or identified that make it difficult? I can, I can reflect on some of the themes I get back of social workers when they come on training, for example. I see them and many of them, you do the training and people are very nervous at the beginning of it cuz they think you're gonna get them all into roleplaying for the whole two days and they're worried about acting in front of people and you've got a nervousness that's there. And they're nervous about what I will do. Will it cause the child damage? Will he upset them even more? Will I be criticized? Will I have a problem if I get to court? Will my manager value it? How will I deal the, the emotions if a child cries or gets upset or a parent? So you've got those. Very real anxieties that are a challenge because we, we are di we are human beings who are worried about our performance and how it affects on children. So that's a very real thing. But then when you get into the course and you show them techniques and they suddenly see that you can take very complicated ideas and do things in a simple way, the show and tell approach helps. And, and, and one of the feedback I get back towards the end of the course is, why didn't we learn this skill on our training? And social work training, you know, has lots of different agendas that it has to impart to people about morals and ethics and about relationships. And I know there's some really good training around the country that spends some time on communicating with children. but do we have a whole term or two terms with, with teaching just on communication skills? And I very, and people are saying, I never learned this when I was associate of training. I learned this when I was in practice doing my placement. Now, of course, placements are a place where you learn skills, but I find it odd that when we're teaching people to be social workers, we are not actually teaching them some of the basic skills. In a more controlled environment in college to say, how do you start a conversation with a child? How do you explain what a social worker is? I know you've done stuff like this on your, your previous webinars and, and stuff about how do I, I mean, I remember talking to American colleague of mine and she was saying, Oh, we had a whole term talking about how you knock on someone's door, how you start the first conversation, where you sit down, how you, and I think that skills element is something that, that I see in early social workers, beginning social workers, that they're learning skills when they're on the job, which I think is great. but it'll be nice if we had some training. So I think people are coming into the job with lots of anxiety. So, so some of the, what, going back to your question, what's one of the challenges? One of the challenges, I don't think we're prepared enough for the task and skill. And, and, and I think that to me, that emphasizes we don't give enough value to one-to-one skill of children. Most experienced workers know it's the most important thing that they do and they know they've learned to it. And we mostly learned it because we've been got it from colleagues, I think back in my career and think who taught me about communicating with children most well, as well as Matt Bra I mentioned, and I got a couple other colleagues, but probably I learned a lot of communication with children's skills from police officers. And the reason I learned that was because when I was doing my video interviews of children we were, we were doing visits together. We were, we were visiting in pairs and I would see the way they talk to a child and I'd pinch their ideas. As social workers, we are one of those professions that tends to go on our own into places without colleagues. We go into places we shouldn't get into. In dangerous situations, and I, the B, for me, the best skill of a social worker is blagging their way into a family and being able to use their skills in order to get people to talk about things they don't want to talk about to. Mm-hmm. And keep the temperature down. It's a real skill, but we do that often on our own. I think sometimes we lose the opportunity. How do we learn from our colleagues? And at the beginning you do lots of joint visits, but then after a while when you're confident they send you on your own. Where does that continuing learning? So I think that some of the challenges are social workers, an isolated professor, so we don't see other people who doing really good skills. Secondly, we are not trained at college. And thirdly is the emotional impact of this stuff is do we as a profession have enough support around us to. Manage those emotions and when you're doing communicating with children, the concepts of transference and the emotions and how they affect us are so crucial. It's really important we think about the support we get as workers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd agree with all of that. And there's two kind of themes that probably stand out for me as well. One, one is there's a kind of fear of bringing into the, the child a subject that seems quite adult. Around, for example, cuz some of the issues are in lots of ways adultified and many children or or more fortunate children tend to be protected from these kind of issues such as parental violence or substance misuse or neglect or sexual abuse. And so we are fearful ourselves about how do we have those kind of conversations with children. But the reality is these children have lived these experiences and so we're trying to protect them from a conversation that's essentially about their. And then the other thing I've kind of noticed, it's interesting you notice about the interviews with the police and, and I've been on Abe training, that that was also some, some of the really best training I've been on. But I wonder if it's like created a fear about like the, the, the, the fear of asking leading questions almost as paralyzed us in some sense. And so now we don't ask any question. Because we're, we're fearful about being pulled up in court and told that we introduced the subject and that's compromised. A particular evidential position. You've raised two, there's two themes there, so I'd separate them off. One is that's, is about our our fear of adult conversations with children and how we do that, I suppose. Dealing with the adult questions first. I, when I started well when I actually started, but very early on in my work with children, I was working with children with disabilities and, and life limiting experiences. So, and, and that's when I first came across the working with children in hospice situation. I immerse myself into KA talking on death and dying. And dealing with people with bereavement and how we communicate. And I was thinking about that in relation to children and I just remember being so impressed with the, those professionals that are working with children. They communicated with them about the most significant fear in the world is loss of life. And I just remember being influenced by the simplicity of the words and the, and, and just saying, what do you, and saying, what do you want to know? And, and it's not that people, I remember Cooper Ross saying, it's not that people don't want to know, it's when they're ready to know. So in telling, Someone they're dying or telling someone they're there. It's not that you go in there and tell'em straight away, it's gi, it's, it's giving them some words and phrases that said, I'm here for you. If you've got any questions, when you're ready, I'll help you with those questions and waiting for those things. And li have a listening ear for when they were ready for the next stage. And I think if children who were going through medical interventions, we, we got much better I think as professionals of, and for a while we didn't. but we got very much teaching children about what's happening to them, what cancer is, what the what, the what, what the, what the medical interventions were. And we beca and I was really impressed by those professionals and it really influenced me when it came to later on conversations about other scary things like sexual abuse or domestic violence or violence. I felt quite confident about being able to do that with children. I had to work out the words. but remembering children deal with loads of stuff in their lives that we think about bereavements and deaths and illnesses. Parents are usually, we, we, many parents are very good at helping them. You know, your own child, you, you know, the right time. So I was listening to parents, listening to others and the phrases they got and thinking about children and I think that notion of how to raise it, I still come across people. I did some training this week and I was talking about life. I was doing some training on, on applying sexual abuse to life story work, and I was making the point that people have. Do you talk to your children about things like if they, if they've gone through neglect, do you teach'em what neglect is? Oh yeah. We'll talk about neglect. So if there's deme, if there's drugs. Do you ever have conversations about drugs and the impact to drugs? Well, yeah. It depends on the age, and we do, and I said, so when it comes to sexual abuse, do you, if you've got sexual abuse in history, do you teach them what sexual abuse. And then there's silence. So there are certain topics that are, these areas we don't want to go for. And for some it's domestic violence. For some it's drugs, for some it's sexual abuse. And I think that my view is, my experience is children are really strong. They're able to handle it. It's, it is the way in which we talk about it. It's not if we tell them, it's how we tell them. And when the timing is right. and I think there's some brilliant some work around that. People have done it. Imagine Brave, as you said, is one of them. Certainly when I'm thinking about some of the influences of my career, I think about the sort of Suzy Esic, Andrew Nell, the sort of the, the words and pictures approach or thinking about and now that's influenced in social work of, of things like the. Sign to safety approach and, and family conferences. We're now beginning a little bit more confidence of involving children and helping children understand. And I think people, different authors have been pushing this agenda for many times. I suppose I was lucky working in the area of working with. Adolescence harmful sexual behavior is that you couldn't see an adolescent without talking to them openly and directly about what they did. So I became quite confident about words and, and uses and phrases. So I think that you're right. Part of it is about our fear of the adult themes and upsetting children. I think what the, the, the key to that is just finding a way of having the conversation. Mm-hmm. The children then take over my mentor, mad Bray. Said, said. Listen to the children. The children will teach you. They are your best teachers. I know it sounds one of those sorts of things you take off a shelf in a self-help book, but I can't think of anything I learned more than she said. If you open a conversation with a child, they will take you there when they're ready and if they're ready. And actually they will define it and they'll define what social worker is. They'll define what a good or bad touch is. They'll define about what is okay, arguments or not. Okay. In a family, usually they'll define it and it's our confidence to start the conversation off. Once we start the conversation, children take over. And I think that's a skill that we need to teach. But I think in the, in the fear of leading questions, I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's the children's, the previous children's commissioner was, was doing this when they were looking at the child sexual abuse of evaluating some of the themes. She was making the point, and I dunno what how she phrased it, but my interpretation of it is we gotta stop faffing around around children when it comes to sexual abuse issues. We ask children quite directly at sometimes about harm issues. But we're often not asking him a direct question, have you been sexually abused? And, and people when I, when I put that in training, but well, we're not allowed to do that. That's leading questions. We're not allowed to go there. And I make the point. Do you ever ask a child whether they've experienced. Bullying at school? Or do we talk to children about seeing rude pictures on the internet? When or or saving, yeah. So tell me what the difference is by asking'em whether they've experienced being hit or being touched on their private parts. And I think the mistake we've made is that for so many years, we're quite rightly are, are, are rightly concerned about the way in which we phrase questions, not wanting to undermine evidence and. And wanting to gather evidence in an evidentially sound way. I think these are good techniques and things that are really important. However, that shouldn't stop us asking the first question, when to inquiries. I remember when I was Training to do what was the memorandum of practice, which turned into the a b e interviews, the achieving best evidence. I remember we were asked to go into a school and they set up a, a situation where we had to a police officer had been into the school the day beforehand and they acted out a play with pirates and they hid some treasure. And then they said to all these primary age children, some people are gonna come in and do interviews with you tomorrow. Don't tell'em where the treasure is, don't tell'em right. we all had to go into the school and use our, the techniques. We've been learning to try and get the child to tell us where the treasure, we didn't know there was treasure. We just knew there was a secret. Not, there were about 30 of us that went in there. Not a single one of us found where the treasure was. The child kept it. But what was interesting is how do you. The one that got closest was the one who asked the question because they were told Dr not to talk to us. The one who was much more direct, I know that you've been asked to keep a secret, that must be really difficult for you. Mm-hmm. and they just labeled it straight away and, and the child, and they got closest to it. And they started off their interviews by. being clear about why they were there and what their purpose was. Whereas we were taught to, well, you can't ask a direct question. You've gotta get the child to give you the agenda first. You ask lots of rapport questions, lots of gathering, but you don't ask a direct question. So we, we, and I understand why we're doing that evidently, but what we're also doing is we're reducing the possibility that the child may actually tell us something that's really important if we don't ask an early question, and I think we should. Should be a bit clearer about, it's not the children's commissioner are saying, we shouldn't be afraid of asking a direct question. Mm-hmm. And then once we've got an answer, they're moving back to indirect questions so that they can tell their story and allow the evidence to come in a safe way. But there's no reason why we can't say we are worried about you. And one of the things I do when I'm. Talking to social workers, as I say, I get them to draw like an EAP drawing when I'm doing it with a child. I, I do lots of visual stuff and I tend to have this habit of drawing clouds all over the paper. And I say, and you do that bit about saying who you are and what a social worker is, and then you've got a bit of your script. It says, I see lots and lots of children who've who've got some worries or problems at home, or, you know, depends on whether they've identified as a problem. I think I see lots and lots of children. The message I'm giving there is you're not the only one. Yeah. And, and I think similar to you, I do the thing about do you know what a social worker is? Have you heard of what a social worker is? And not all children have social workers, so why do you think some children have them and some don't? And the child often then is asking, well, some children are hurt and some children here. And I said, yeah, I see lots and lots of children who got worries and they got all, there's problems in at home or problems at school. I say, what type of problems do you think children might. Yes, and then they often. Few loves and I write them all down. And it's usually things like bullying, being hurt, not that. And we, we laugh about it not getting enough biscuits or not having enough Christmas presents and we have a bit of humor in there. And then I gradually add on and I'm saying to them, well, some of the children I see and then I start putting my agenda in. Some of the children are worried about arguments at home. Mm-hmm. Some children I see have got bullying, some children have had people touching them on their private parts, which is not allowed. And we call that sexual abuse and some children, Hit by people and we call it physical abuse. Now I'm already labeling a whole range of problems. Mm. And at the end of it, I then say, I wonder if you've had any of these experiences. Mm. Now is that a direct leading question or is it, I'm just talking about children's problems and allowing them to go into the one that might be there. Now, some of them won't tell you about'em of course. But what you're doing is you're just letting the child uncomfortable with this. I'm comfortable with talking about it. I'm here because of their. And then I might talk to them about the specific worry that I'm there. But I think that this, what I'm finding is that when I shown that to people, people go wide. I can, I do that? That's easy, isn't it? And I say, yet it is, it's the fear of of getting things wrong that hamper us. And actually, if we've got a script as workers and a technique, we can be much more confident. It comes over in our body languages. The children pick it up and then, then the conversation goes. I mean, I'm in the area of child sexual. Everyone's scared of talking about children, about sex or sexual abuse. Many children, not everyone is, but lots of people are. But the amounts of we, we think that probably only around 20% of the children in their life actually ever tell about abuse. And all those that tell it's a very tiny proportion it ever leads to a conviction. Hmm. I always find it fascinating that our practice of social workers is impaired by that tiny proportion that we want to make sure we don't get it wrong, whereas there are so many other children that could benefit from a directness. So I'm not advocating here that we go in and, and all direct questions with a child and leading them. I am saying we should have a bit more confidence in being prepared to ask them. At the end of our general inquiries, if we haven't got any concerns, it's asking the child a direct question and at the end of the direct question then we can go back to evidentially sounded techniques. Yeah, I think that's a really powerful and effective way to approach having a conversation with the child is, is, is mapping out the various different worries that a child could potentially have and then identifying others. Cuz that is just, it's very generalized. It's not, you're not specifically saying that you might have experienced this or you might have experienced. There is also an element where we do have a, a privileged level of insight in our work, because often we're involved because there's been evidentially identified concerns. So we know that the police have been around the, the, the home the last four weekends because we've got the reports and we've seen the police say, and we've seen the children and. And so then when we go in and we, and we're not asking that specifically, it kind of deprives the child of an opportunity to it, like the level of, and it's like we need to be confident in order for the child to feel confident that, that they can, that we can handle what they're about to tell us. And and I think that kind of tool, it's made me realize that actually. Cause I feel like I've, I've done that, but I must have learned that when I did the training with you. Well, we talk, I, I talk, and I, I got this in Mag Gray. I'm sure. We we're trying to get this bridge into the child's world. I mean, there's that thing about. I know Maggie's phrase that that influence, I know influence you is we don't wanna drag these kids kicking into our world. We want to enter their world. It's incumbent upon us to enter their world, and we can do that through play and conversations. But there's another way of bridging in. We're bridging into. What's the bridge into the topic of conversation And the bridge may well be, I'm here because Mrs. Johnson said that you spoke to at school today. That's something that's worrying you. And Mrs. Johnson's told me about it, but I wondered, you know, my job is to help children when they got wa So the bridge is spoken to Mrs. Johnson. I'm here. I know that the police came and visited you the other day, and I work with children to get worried. When the police go, there's a bridge. So you are always looking for what's the. Into the conversation, aren't you? And and I think sometimes the conversation bridge, of course you're seeing the parents cuz you might be seeing the parents before you, a child has any awareness of the real problem. And that's often happens in sexual abuse cases. You know, parents have been moved out the house. Because there's an allegation investigation going on. They're keeping the children safe. The child has been given, what script have they been given from the parent about why their mommy or daddy's no longer there or why they have to see them supervised, and quite often the explanations they're given are. When it comes to sexual abuse, people say, well, I don't wanna upset my child, which says, we're just having a break. Or daddy's, you know, we mom and dad have got problems, or whoever the parents are, and I'm so many of the times it ha the problem has not been labeled. So a lot of it is talking with the parents and saying, what would you. What have you so charged your child so far how, how have you explained this to the child? What do they know so far? What's happened? What's the child's understanding of that? What words have you used? What would you like to say, but don't know how to say? And then often my job is then to script for the parents what they could say to their child and say, well, look, I can come and see your. do they know why I'm coming to see them? What? What would you like to be saying to them about who I am and what I'm saying and what I'm coming for? And often I'm scripting parents, you know, well, mommy's gone to see someone called Rob, and Rob helps people in families when there are touching problems or when there are worries about mom and dad's not living together and he's come to help me and mommy to tell you about why daddy's not here. It might be as simple as, But you've still got that bridge. So when you go there, the child knows there's a reason that you're seeing them. Mm-hmm. but of course in, in, in many of the safeguarding and child protection matters, you are not welcome. You're not wanted. Yeah. So you've got resistance. So you're dealing with parental resistance as well as that. So sometimes it's, you know, we, we have to use our statu requirements of seeing children outside. And that's a totally different type of conversation that we are having with a child who perhaps always been told. Bad things about you as a social worker so therefore you're dealing with past scripts of what the parent. And so I find that, you know, in those situations you have a different type of interviewing. You're doing like what I call source monitoring or what other people call source monitoring. You know, what do you know about social workers? Or they take kids into care. How did you hear? Who told you about social workers? How did you hear about so? Well, mommy told me. What did mommy tell you? Mommy told me. Bang, bang, bang. And you know where the resistance is coming. So you say, well, yes, some children that does happen. But let me tell you about other types of social workers. So if you have information coming from a child about what their attitudes are, You can be ready to sort of correct the distortions of the scripts that are there, but it all relies. Goes back to that basic thing is I wonder what it's like in that child's world. I wonder what they're seeing. I wonder what they've been told. I wonder what they think about this strange grownup who's coming into their school or coming at home and seeing them. So the initial script you have for me, Is the key skill in communicating with children, and that's the thing that we're not teaching people enough about. I mean you know, as say I learned it through experience, you learned it through experience. We often didn't have it in our training to teach as to how to work in a conversation. It's making me think about something that you've talked about on the training that I did around the, the cost of telling for children, like. Because E even if we go in with the script and we identify that there is different issues that potentially could be relevant, there's always the possibility that children are quite fearful or apprehensive about the implications of revealing anything that's happening for them and their home life. How, how, how do you overcome some of that? I know you just mentioned about the, the, the, the social workers and what the social worker's role is in correcting that as a distort. how do you overcome the child who's resistant? Because they're fearful about what we may or may not do once they've told us what's going on at home. There's a number of techniques that people have used over many years and we've adapted them from different disciplines. But I think it, first off, it's an attitudinal one with me and, and not everyone agrees with me about this, is we got a social work staff. The social workers and care professionals were often influenced by this desire to. sometimes both. It's a positive, a negative attribute, which is our desire to rescue. You know, we want to help children and I think that sometimes we're, we're wanting children to tell us because then we can make decisions to keep them safe. Now that's understandable. That's a core part of what we do, but I think sometimes we, we forget that AVO aspect, which is. It's for the child to decide whether they want to tell us. It's not our idea to pull this inform, trick the child into telling us. Mm-hmm. I worry that if we start from a position, my job is to help this child rescue them. I've gotta do lose lots of tricks and adults we're good at it. We're good at leading questions or pulling tricks in, and children might say things. Communication and verbal communication is not what children's skill is. That's not their prime mode, mode of communication, play, or action is, is, is. And it's only as we get adults, we get better at controlling words and speaking. And I think the danger is that we can trick children into telling us things before they're ready to. And then of course, what happens, particularly in abuse situations, They tell us about something and once they realize what the real life consequences are of us to it loss of family being, their loss of their, you know, being taken away from their dog or, or, or loss of routines or the cost of, of lack of love or attention or violence, then it's not surprising. And many children retract when they realize the reality. So I think if we are going in to get information with children, we've got to respect the fact that some children might not tell you, and that may be. it may be okay to give them an option of not telling you. So I go in, not if I come out of an interview and I haven't been told what I think is what they really, what I think is going on. In my early career, I used to give myself a hard time and, and say, I haven't done the job, they haven't talked to me, I haven't kept the child safe. Nowadays, I, I, it's more about. yes. I haven't found the right thing to, to help the child talk, but it may be they're not yet ready to talk. And what I have to do is to think about what do I need to do to create a temporary safety around them or give them an opportunity to talk when they're ready. Mm-hmm. There's an exercise, I dunno if we did it on the training we did with you. I know a lot of people do this stuff. There's a, I get people to write a secret in a, in an envelope. About themselves. I know lots of other trainers now do it. Mag Bray, I think probably came up with the idea, wouldn't surprise me. Putting a, putting a, a secret about your life in an envelope. And then I go around the group and I take all the envelopes and I don't tell them what I'm gonna do with it. I don't give them any instructions and I put it in a bag and I put it in the middle of the room. And sometimes I say to them, you know, and later on in the. I then open the bag and it looks as if I'm about to open the envelopes. But before I do, I say to people on a, on a scale of not to 10, how anxious are you? Mm-hmm. And there's some people that give me, I'm, I'm, I'm eight outta 10. I'm nine outta 10. And usually I know they're the ones that have actually put a secret in there. Yeah. Yeah. But then you ask everyone else to say, oh, one outta 10 and two. And I know that those people have either put a blank piece of paper or they've lied about their secret, but I don't read the secrets out. They get them all back. We don't, we don't, we don't break those boundaries. But my point how would you have known what to write on that piece of paper? Because I didn't tell you what I was gonna do with the information. I didn't tell you whether I was gonna read it out to people, whether I was gonna use it. So that, that in real life, if we don't give children clarity about what happens with any information, Why would they tell us? Hmm. So that many children, they give us a four outta 10 secret, but they hold back the real secret because they're gonna test out. So I think if we go in there and we, we are clever at getting lots of information with children without having established a relationship, without setting boundaries, without letting them know what our job is and what we're doing. Many children are not gonna tell us what the ba, the, the, the abuse is. And that's why lots of children. don't give their, they don't tell about their abuse experiences until they're perhaps safe or in care because they didn't feel they could do and sometimes years later. And so I think sometimes it's about when we're dealing with resistance is start from a position of I might not get it all. And to start from a position of saying, I've gotta build this relationship up if I really want to get past this denial or this resistance. And then it's setting up the context. Of which you give them opportunities to tell you. So I think that that's why what you referred to earlier, and I learned this from working, I think a lot in the area of working with adolescents who'd engaged in problematic sexual behaviors and with young children. A colleague of mine taught me this a woman called Alex Brown, who, who's was a real mentor of mine in terms of early days of sexual harmful behavior. She talked. if you're talking about an adolescent, about sexual harmful behavior, don't talk about their sexual behavior first. You talk about sexual behavior generally, or let's think about another person of a similar age as you who might have done similar things to what you've been accused of. What would be a reason they wouldn't tell? What would be a reason that they wouldn't tell anyone? Or, and then you get whole list from kids when you're talking about hypothetical character. Well, they might get into trouble. They might get told off, they might get put into jail. What they're giving you is clues as to the possible structure of their own denial of. And similarly, people do that now, and nowadays the technique is to do it. I mean, we do that a lot with three or four year old children. We don't go in and ask more direct questions. We do it through reading books, stories about loss, stories about anger, stories about situations. Children are more likely to do it in third person conversations before they can apply it to themselves. Developmentally, children are not ready until they're older, perhaps, to have much more of a focused conversation. So we younger children, we do it through puppets and we do it through toys or we do it through books. And I think that general principle of whenever I speak to a child, I talk about what other children might feel first. Mm-hmm. And then they, and they know what they're telling you. They know they're doing it, but they're not naming it. And then I move to the next level. I say, I wonder whether you've had any, there's any of those similar happen to you? And they might not answer. but they, they're looking at you and you know that you've got a communication going on there. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, there's, you know, when you are ready, you may be ready to tell me, but then I might say, well, if you, if you had a child who did tell, I wonder what they'd be worried about and if they think that might worried about what would happen. I can say, well, let, let's imagine I was working with a child that was, that was this age, and these are some of the possible things that could happen. What I'm doing is I'm giving them a roadmap. Which might, these are possible options, and I'm also trying to put positives on it, about what if they don't tell? What are the cost of not telling? What are the cost of telling? How can, and in a way, I'm, there's a bit of preparation for the child there and it's not dragging them into it. Mm-hmm. it's saying, this is the real world. I'm giving you hints here. I'm letting you see it, but I'm here when you're ready. And I think that's been a very powerful hypothetical. Working has been something I use all the time. Yeah, I really like that idea of not like that the approach to direct work is, is simply orientated around our desire to keep children safe. Because the risk with that kind of idea is that it children then just become a means to an end where we're just going into the relationship or Yeah. With them, with an intention to try and extract out a particular information that will, will serve us evidently. You know, hypothetically keeping them, keeping them safe, whereas the, the approach that you're advocating for is much more kind of relational and, and also con and therapeutic. And yet at the same time will probably have a greatest success of being able to elicit the type of information that will support us in our assessment and our ability to help the children and, and their family. I think you're right. It. One of the dilemmas that I think we face as social workers is, is born from our training. And it's a good, it's a good dilemma in a way. We are so rooted in an understanding of things like attachment and developmental trauma. Mm-hmm. And we understand that children get affected in so many different ways. But we've also got that part of us that is like poli, like the police. We're wanting to investigate and gather information to keep people safe, and there can sometimes be a conflict going upon there, a desire to gather information versus the the needs of the child. It comes out a lot in abuse situations in that. We might take a parent, we might move a parent outta the house because of our concerns of sexual abuse, and we might then put restrictions on, there might be bail conditions put on where they can't see their child. And often because we're so emotionally affected by the idea of what sexual abuse or domestic violence is, we're saying, well, they shouldn't see their child again. But then there's the other part of our training that says we've got, on the one hand that po possible harm of. Versus the probable harm of what separation has caused for that child. Mm-hmm. so that we know that harm has been caused by taking their parents out or taking a child into care causes children's harm. And we're balancing that against the harm of being abused. So we've got two different forms of harm, which we're trying to balance, and that sometimes that's where things like supervise contact or, or restorative justice approaches can be very useful because we're consider. the child's holistic needs to have belonging identity with their parents versus our needs to keep them safe. Mm-hmm. and I think in a safeguarding context, we can get, we can get so concentrating on keeping them safe. We're forgetting about the child's attachment needs and their identity needs with the parent who may also be the parent who's abused them or hurt them or not get them safe. Mm-hmm. and I think social workers we're dealing with that really muddy and complicated world of. Of helping the child with their relationships whilst keeping them safe. And there can be a conflict there. Many children I see when it comes to abuse, say to me in therapeutic work I do with them is when I told, it wasn't that I wanted mom or dad out the family. I wanted to go in the care I just told. Cause I wanted the abuse to stop. Yeah. and that when the abuse stopped and I'm suddenly, my life has changed. I wonder, should I have ever told, because the costs of telling have meant a, a changed my whole family life, which is why some children accommodate the abuse and that accommodates the wrong word. But in the, in the theories we talk about that children might. Decide that the costs of telling are worse than the costs of not, not telling. You know, the costs are greater in, in telling, and I think that's hard for us as social workers. And it's a challenge to those who are doing sections 47 investigations. We've got policies and procedures, we're working the police, we're gathering evidence. You see, the police job is, is to gather evidence and to put evidence before the Crown Prosecution service decided. Now, that's quite rightly their job. Mm. So they're, they're wanting to gather evidence, but social workers, we can sometimes get drawn into that and think we are helping you do your job. Whereas it is our job to collate evidence and work in terms of that. But our job is also to think more widely about the future, more holistic needs. And I think in more recent years, and certainly since I've been involved, You know, early P police will just see their job as gathering evidence, but I think police officers who work in specialist teams have got a really good grounding and understanding, thinking about the whole needs of the child and, and I find'em really sensitive to what the needs are. And I think as social workers working with colleagues, like police officers are working with doctors, our job is to make sure the child's agenda is kept center when we're making really difficult decisions. And we're looking at the holistic aspects of the child, not just about the offending. And I think. Sometimes makes us seem quite wooly to other professionals, but I think that's our skillset. We, we are looking at the long game, not just the short game in terms of the child when it comes to communicating with children. That can be a dilemma. Are we gathering evidence or are we providing a relationship that maximizes the chances we get to hear what actually is going on? Mm. Yeah. And I remember reading I think a book by James Penny Baker, who's done a lot of work. the role of journaling and, and expressive writing and as a, as a mechanism to overcome trauma or fast, difficult experiences. And one of the things that you wrote is that there's the, there's the experience that you have and then there's the secrecy around the experience. And the secrecy in of itself can be just as profound or damaging as the experience in, in of itself. Part of our role is about trying to extract information from an evidential point of view, but part of it is if you can create an opening for children and create a trust and relationship where they can share some of their experiences and, and then potentially involve the parents, that's really powerful therapeutic intervention in of itself because the child's not carrying around this, this secret of this experience and trying to contain it all by themselves. I, I couldn't agree anymore. It's, it's, there's so much we can do to sh again, I know I'm talking abuse quite a bit here, but that's been the thing that's influencing a lot in my career. But when, when I worked with colleagues of mine that worked with adult sex offenders and other colleagues, which would work with non-offending, the non-offending partner of the sex offender. And then you've got people working with children. Often you've got separate pieces of work going on in different parts of the family system. And the challenge is how do you get a shared narrative within a family system? Does that child understand what's happened with their family? Does the parent. Have a shared communication or words they can use with their child so that we can do work that's finding things out and gathering and what we think is best. But at some point there needs to be that integration of the different, different understandings to help the family integrate. Now, that might not be being, staying together, it might be a shared narrative about separation or about, about the reasons, and I find the same, the, the same. Themes crop into my work of doing therapeutic life story work or post-adoption work, is that you are often working with a narrative that predates them coming into their, their family, which come from their family. Now, some parents have, are brilliant at being able to integrate that within the child's narrative, but in some families, they. for different reasons. They haven't, they've, they've not been confident about sharing the child's history and they haven't found the right words. And then you're dealing with 15 year old kids who come and see me and their parents are saying, oh, they've never asked any questions about their past. And within about four minutes of being in the session where I've done that, these are some of the reasons kids see me and they see me sad sometimes. They've got questions about their past and I have a whole essay of questions that they've been carrying around for many years. And the challenge. do you undermine the child by saying, well, your child's thinking this, and the child's anxious about the cost of their parent hearing it? Or do you find a way in opening the narrative up and sharing it and and being able to help both parties to be able to think about the needs of the respective needs of the others. And sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and some people don't want to know. So there's lots of agenda. And I think it, I suppose it goes back to the beginning of this conversation when you first met me and we talked about mad Bray's influence the, an exercise I did, if you can recall, I often do on the communicating, we do agendas. I get people in different groups, but to, to look at the different roles and thoughts of different individuals within a family circumstances. And then we eventually, at the end of this exercise, I go and talk to the child and, and what we, what we, what comes to that exercise. How the adult agendas are the ones that are always dominating the child's world, but the child is on the receiving end of all these adult agendas. And I think that one of the problems in families, the secrecy, you talked about what a child's experience, but if they're not either not being told about it or they're keeping it in, if we haven't got shared experiences. The danger is the adult agendas will always be the ones we are working with as professionals. Mm-hmm. And we fail to think about what the agendas of the child who's experienced something much different from what we say they are. So how do we tune into the child's agendas? How do we hear what they're saying? How do we connect with them in a way that's both evidentially safe and also developmentally sensitive, but also doesn? Impact on each trauma. How do we use skills to find out what is the child's agenda and put that child's agenda in the center? Not saying it's any more or less important than other people's agendas, but just saying we're equally waiting it alongside the other decision for me, is the key about communicating with children. We've gotta advocate for children, making sure they're heard, but what they're heard in a way that helps parents and doesn't undermine them, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Absolut. Just before we kind of wrap it up, is there any kind of books or resources that, that you would recommend in terms of direct work skills? Is it social work toolbox.com? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I know workers, I mean, I started my career doing loads of worksheets and things like that. Worksheets for me. I don't tend to use worksheets all the time with children. I use worksheets as a prompt for my conversations with children. I said, oh, hang on, I've got a worksheet here. Well, really out to me. Well, that's why I was gonna ask you about this. And then we get into, I don't always use it as a, here's a worksheet, but actually I do think that for those beginning the work, worksheets and work ideas, they're great. They give you that confidence, don't they, of using things you've never done before. Mm-hmm. people see the way of phrasing questions. So social work.com, social work toolbox.com has a huge array of resources that are really useful. And, and I think in terms of communicating with children, I think we referred to earlier, and I, I know that on previous conversations you've referred to, but a big text was the Essex and Tennell. Book, which is was it denied child abuse? I can never remember the, the working with deny child abuse working. Yeah, it's really good in terms of thinking about scripts with children and about breaking it down into things like, what's the problem? How does the child experience it? What are we gonna do? And it, it talks. And there's visual ways. I would certainly recommend that. And certainly with the influence of things like signs of safety as approach in the UK at the moment, you can look at where it originally came from and whilst it came from the area of child sexual abuse to begin with it, then it's morphed into just a general principle of communicating with children. I think that's uh, a really good book to do so, so I'd be sort of using those resources really when I've been thinking about those. And we've talked about Mad Bray and she's, her book's called. Poppies on the rubber sheep sexual abuse of the child's voice, which, yeah, I dunno whether that's still in print. You got it. I think there, I mean it's it's written pre-video interview of children. So the technique she's talking about of when she was interviewing children was prior to the, the guidance we have on the evidential side of it. So I, so the caution to that book is to say some of the things that she's doing there we wouldn't be doing now in the interview. However, for me, It's a bit of a bible for me because it's one of the best books that gets in touch with the child's agenda and how the child sees the world and she writes in a lovely style. I dunno if it's still in print or not, you might still be able to get it, but for me it's still the, the book that influence in my career. And when I do training, I still read stories out from it. That, that give you this sense of, of the principle. Using techniques of active listening co-counseling techniques. The, the main technique I use that have influenced me in my career, probably the most important things influencing me in my, in my career is the ability to shut up. Yeah. Cuz you can tell I talk a lot. So my ability to shut up has been the thing I learned most when I was using sort of play therapeutic techniques and non-directive techniques. It's quite those who do play therapy. It's a real skill, it's a real discipline. And in the early days I was taught some of those skills to, to integrate within my work. But marriage had this notion of time for you and time for. Time for you is now you, you've explained to child who you're there for. And time for you is we're gonna have some time for you and this is a chance where you can just play with the toys or you can do some drawing or we can listen to some music. This is a time where you can do whatever you want to. I'm just gonna be with you and I'll listen to you and if you want me to get involved, I. Later on, we're gonna have some time for me. Time for me is where I've got some questions to ask you and I want to talk to you and I, and I always say whatever type of worker you are, always think when you're seeing a child dividing into the time for you and time for me. Make sure in the interaction you've got a moment that is about attending to whatever the child's interested. So I have to start conversations with younger children saying, oh, I like your shoes, or I like your t-shirt. Where did you get that? And the child then goes on this, well, I went to the shops and mommy bought it to me. And then for the next few minutes, all I'm doing is I'm as as fascinated by. The shoes they bought in a shoe shop as I am by them telling me about the abuse. And then I go into active listening techniques. I don't ask any questions. I reflect back on what they're saying. I'm just showing them pure and unadultered interests. And most children never get that level of of, of one-to-one active listening. And if you can do that either through a conversation or being in the garden, kicking a football around or going for a walk, and you're just listening to Chatal and you're not asking questions, you're, you're just listening. You're just letting the child know you're here when it comes to the time for you. I've always found that the quality of what I get is there. Where my interview techniques have gone wrong is when I've rushed into an interview, rushed into a session mm-hmm. I've gone straight into asking questions and the child shut down and I've come out afterwards thinking, you idiot, Rob, you forgot the basics, which is to shut up, to listen and to get in touch with the child. And I think we owe that from those coming from counseling techniques and, and psychotherapists that, that basic skill. Of listening and I think social workers as a profession, we, we are not counselors, but we should be using the counseling skills to assist our listening skills. And I think we should be using that with children. If I was to give anyone an advice, is learning the ability to say less, listen more to sharp more before, before you do the key route job that we have to do, which is asking questions a bit later on. Brilliant. Thanks, Rob. I feel I, I remember as well as the content of your training, it was the LE's the level of passion and enthusiasm that you have is so in infectious. It's like yes, it's palpable. And if people are interested in your work or do, do you still deliver training? Is that still an option? How can they get home with you and where can they find you? They can connect me with, connect with me on. So I'm there Rob, Rob Tucker. It's a R G T Training consultancy. I'm always interested in working with groups and doing training with people around the skills element. In fact, of all the training I do, I do lots of training around things, but the training I enjoy most is going back to. Communicating with children skills. I do adapted ones. I do training for for, for single assessments or for assessments. Trying to get people to make sure that we are filling in those boxes properly, but also using skills. So yeah, I'll be delighted to, and to, to, if people want to make connect, connect with me or have a conversation, then please get, get a hold of me by then. Brilliant. Excellent. Thanks. Thanks, Rob. Thanks for inviting me today. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.