The SOP Toolkit: The Surprising Superstrength of Solution-Focused Questions
Solution-focused questions are like a superpower: What we focus on grows; if we ask questions focused on solutions, we greatly improve our ability to enhance safety and stability for kids and families in care. This super simple and yet profoundly powerful concept makes up the backbone of Safety Organized Practice.
Tools from the Kit
Solution-Focused Practice (SFQ) Quick Guides
Our SOP Toolkit takes a deep dive into Solution-focused questions (SFQs) for both social workers and child welfare leaders. The quick guide for line staff covers the basics before exploring specific types of solution-focused questions and when best to use them. The supervisor quick guide focuses on ways supervisors can support staff in using SFQs in their practice.
Try Out the SFQ Challenge!
We recently received a great Toolkit submission for a Solution-Focused Questions Challenge! Developed by Monica Montury for San Luis Obispo County, the SFQ Challenge is a fun-spirited contest challenging social workers to try on different types of SFQs each month to compete for unique prizes.
Stories from the Field...
SOP in Action
Adaptive Together consultant and coach Lucia Weiss shares how she worked with a group of managers and applied a wide range of SOP tools to help keep a family intact.
I worked with a group of managers to reflect on a case within their organization. People had a range of opinions and were not certain about whether the best decision was made. A manager presented the thought process and how practices were integrated to make the decision.
Starting with a genogram, we talked through how the staff integrated SOP engagement strategies, cultural responsiveness practices and the SDM assessment tools to better understand the family’s perspective and make a fact-based decision. The group engaged in courageous conversations and asked powerful questions about the situation where a family had remained intact despite a parent not being protective.
After reviewing SDM definitions, we explored the safety network and protective capacities. The family was not eligible for ICWA but had an indigenous heritage from Mexico. Therefore, a cultural broker was engaged to help provide cultural context to the department and to support the family. All of this helped the group expand their awareness and helped them to make a rigorous, balanced assessment. The manager talked about the impact of using appreciative inquiry, to slow down the moving train where some individuals felt strongly that removal was necessary despite the safety threat being mitigated. Biases like, “we need to remove the children because parents that fail to protect need to be punished” and, “the family’s culture and traditions normalized behaviors causing them to not respond” were surfaced.
The group ultimately came together with the consensus around keeping the family intact, agreeing with a plan to monitor protective behavioral changes. The situation was safe with a plan, since the father had fled from the home and because there was a network person that was willing to move in and be protective. We learned that the mother did make previous efforts to protect, although they were unsuccessful. She was now acknowledging the impact of continued abuse and was starting to demonstrate protective actions. The SDM risk level was moderate, and a discretionary override was used to increase the risk level up one to “high,” to monitor that the protective actions were demonstrated consistently, in the event the father resurfaced, at any time in the future.
The integrated practice ultimately led to ensuring an equitable decision that prevented system trauma on top of the trauma that was already experienced. The decision would have been very different if we had not been able to push past the traditional approach to “failure to protect” assumptions and the biases that surround that perspective. Taking time to reflect on decisions ended up being an invaluable learning experience for the organization.
Lucia Weiss was kind enough to share two tools that were used in the discussions that supported an integrated practice approach. They both help to integrate SOP engagement strategies, SDM and intentional cultural responsiveness practices.
Share Your Own SOP Success Stories, Tips and/or Tools!
The power of SOP has always been that it is grassroots – developed and enhanced by the people who use it in practice! Have you developed a new SOP tool for your own county? Or do you have a success story to highlight? If you have a specific tool or a story from the field you’d like to share, you can do so through our submission form. Simply fill in the fields, attach the tool, and we’ll be in touch from there!
Learn More About the SOP Toolkit
Be sure to visit the Safety Organized Practice (SOP) Toolkit website.
Check out the SOP Toolkit blog!
Read about more Tools from the Kit and Stories from the Field on the SOP Toolkit blog.