SUCCESSFUL FACILITATION OF FAMILY TEAM MEETINGS Maryanne Rehberg, LCSW Agenda Introductions Foundation for Family Team Meetings Helpful Ideas for the Good Facilitator Process of Family Team Meeting Problems with Meetings Successful Family Facilitation: Tips Skills practice What is a facilitator? Literally means: making things easy A person who helps a group or team to: Meet their goals/achieve results in interactive events By using a range of skills and methods To bring the best out in people as they work together 1
Relationship Between Personality Characteristics and Facilitation Awareness of your personal style is key: Wherever You Go, There You Are! Allows you to predict/understand your behavioral responses and provides an opportunity to see how your level of participation, mannerisms, responses/ideas/etc may differ from others. Behavioral responses are not good or bad; they are simply part of us. Activity Realms of Perspective 2
The Art of Facilitation It s not knowing exactly what to do/say that s most important or trying to be 100% perfect, it s knowing what to do when you don t know what to do or you or the meeting aren t 100% perfect Role: Conductor/DJ Requirements of Core Practice Model Family Meetings Best Practices: All of these factors result in increased satisfaction among participants and better outcomesthe team meeting process should be standardized to include A clearly defined purpose, goal and agenda for each meeting; An agreed-upon decision-making process; Identification of family strengths and needs; A brainstorming and option-generating process; Specific action steps to be done by team members with a timeline. Purpose of the CFT meeting: enhance engagement, build familiarity and trust, integrate their work, develop service plans, monitor results, create accountability and deal with changing situations and 3
Increasing Family Involvement in FTMs Help families identify advocates to being to meeting with them Suggest what things they might want to have thought about/come prepared with to Increase family s verbal participation Make sure the meeting is more than just a status update HANDOUT The Vision: Each FTM Will Create a welcoming environment that will decrease animosity and distrust while quickly linking parents to a unified and coordinated support team Help parents better understand what is expected of them, how they can accomplish those tasks and what support they need/will have Help parents better understand their children s needs and how to best support and respond to their children Create clearly defined safety/reunification goals and the milestones that will help identify the family s progress towards achieving those goals The Vision: Each FTM Will Enhance our ability to engage, empower, partner and be transparent with families throughout the decision- and goal-making processes Enhance our ability provide individualized, culturally responsive, flexible, and relevant services for each family 4
Success is in the Set Up First step in a successful meeting starts BEFORE you even have the meeting How? Role: Partial Impartial Helper Ideally, we like to have no stake in the outcomes but sometimes we do How does that affect our role as facilitator FTM STEPS Step One: Opening, Purpose and Outcome Welcome and Team Member Introductions Discuss agenda, purpose for the meeting and the desired outcome Step Two: Group Agreements and Context Establish, Clarify, Add to Group Agreements, Assign Roles as needed Is there anything that might pull our attention away from our FOCUS today ( i.e. Something happened before the meeting, someone needs to leave early, other Distractions) Step Three: Network and Stakeholders Is everyone here that should be? If not, how do we get them here? Step Five: Content Brainstorming How To Meet Outcome(s) Step Seven: What s Needs to Happen Next? Next Steps Step Eight: Feedback And Closing 5
Common Ground rules One person speaks at a time Agree to disagree Talk to each other as you d like to be talked to Exploring Primary Focus: Listening Secondary Focus: Broad Assessment Skills: Active Listening Open ended questions/statements Scaling questions Preferred future questions Coping, Exception and Past Success Questions Focusing Primary Focus: Narrowing conversation to specific areas Secondary Focus: Planning and decisionmaking Skills: Clarification and Intentional Confusion ( Help me understand ) Summarization (Highlight key areas to focus on) Solution Defining Ask family what ideas they have 6
Questioning Use O P E N to probe: Who, why, what, when, how? Use CLOSED (yes/no answers) to redirect/ summarize: Are you saying that? Socratic Direction Examples of Socratic questions include: Questions of clarification I want to make sure I understand you. What do you mean by? Let me see if I understand you; do you mean or? Could you give me an example? Could you explain that further? Questions that probe assumptions You seem to be concluding. Do I understand you correctly? It seems your reasoning depends on the idea/belief that. Questions that probe reasons and evidence Why do you think that is true? Can you help me/us understand your reasons for saying that? What led you to that belief? Optimal Distribution of Skills: 50% Exploring 30% Focusing 20% Guiding 7
Facilitator s Goal Gain people s involvement Get a feeling for peoples thoughts, ideas or opinions. Involve quiet people. Recognize keycontributors. Manage the meeting time. Gain understanding (vs. agreement) by exploring both sides of an issue. Examples How do you feel about? What is your idea about? What do you think? That s an interesting idea. Tell us more. OK, we ve spent quite a bit of time on that... How do you feel about moving on? That is one way of looking at it. Let s look at the other side. What would happen if you? Using Feedback Skillfully Help participants to think through these questions: 1. What did you do well? 2. If you had a redo, what would you have done differently/ better? 3. What prevented you from doing even better; what s the plan to do even better in the future? Guiding Primary Focus: Plan implementation (short and longer-term) Keep things moving forward Secondary Focus: Problem-solving Skills: Ask for family s input on specific areas Provide options and suggestions What solutions have worked for you in the past regarding? 8
Group processes:intervening Clarifying Purpose, Expectations, Worries Model sought after behavior (pay attention to non-verbal) Seek involvement for as many as possible Double check understanding Be Mindful of Agenda Focus is purpose being accomplished manage time Skills to Achieve Core Conditions: Exploring Skills Focusing Skills Guiding Skills Active Listening Reframing Advice Reflections Clarification Options Attending Behaviors Open Questions Suggestions Mirroring Closed Questions Feedback Indirect Questions Solution-focused Questions Summarization The Skills of Facilitation Requires Using the Core Conditions of Helping Genuineness Respect Empathy Good listener and observer Skilled in the art of asking the right questions in the right way at the right time. Seek participation and give group members the opportunity to reflect, think, discover and make decisions by themselves 9
More Tools Required for Effective Facilitation Other skills include redirecting questions/comments, giving +++ reinforcement, encouraging contrasting views, involving quieter members of the group, and dealing with domineering or hostile participants. Nonverbal techniques like eye contact, level of attentiveness, facial expressions, body language, enthusiasm, and maintaining optimism. Have to read and analyze group dynamics continuously in order to guide the group in a productive way Preventing disruptions Establish ground rules early Listen and show respect Stay cool Use person s name Timeouts Conflict Handling Refer back to group agreements Identify any points of commonality or agreement Reformulate contributions to highlight common ideas Step-in and Redirect Have some go-to phrases in your toolbox Parking Lot 10
Problem Solving Identify a solution or strategy for each of the common problems Keys to a Facilitator s Success Do your homework: Prepare, prepare, prepare Structure Meetings to have a clear Purpose and Outcome and start meting with stating that purpose Have a way to measure success Ensure family s voice is heard, needs are addressed Adjust when conflict surfaces, manage power and control issues that arise, manage flow of discussion to ensure that all are heard and no one dominates Explain the purpose in advance Ensure that every person in the room feels that their perspective is valid Model Strengths Based Practice Wrap up and Evaluation Thank You 11