Cheshire West and Chester - Trauma Informed Practice and Motivational Interviewing

We were delighted to be chosen to provide a large-scale training programme encompassing Trauma Informed Practice and Motivational Interviewing across a wide multi agency workforce across Cheshire West and Chester.

We worked very closely with lead officers to create a programme for:

• Up to 80 leaders including a 2-day training programme with ½ day follow up
• A core programme for over 1300 multi agency workforce members partners across Health, Children’s Social Care, Early Help and Prevention, Schools, Education, Fire, Police, third sector, Commissioned Services, Adult Services & Youth Offending Services
• The courses were initially delivered face to face but subsequently adapted for virtual delivery in view of the restrictions caused by the Covid 19 pandemic.

The programme, called Our Way of Working, is about developing a common and consistent approach to working with families based on shared language and shared understanding across all partners who work with families.

Their model incorporates using Motivational Interviewing and Trauma Informed Practice as a basis for practice and they use: 

• Learning Conversations to help discuss, reflect and review how they are working with each other to make a difference for a family
• Group Supervision to share and discuss concerns for a child, assess need and risk and ensure they have a clear plan to keep a child safe.

 The training programme was developed in partnership with Interface drawing on their skill and specialism especially in culture change and large-scale training and development programmes to support the structure and delivery of the programme.

The programme was received enthusiastically by the delegates with consistently excellent feedback seen. Delegates particularly appreciated the virtual delivery which was rated even higher than the initial face to face delivery.

Working with Interface provides a good example of partnership working to drive forward a large scale, multi-agency training and development programme.  Their values and approach underpinning their work reflected their commitment and drive to the programme. Interface shared the vision and values of the programme to improve outcomes and make a difference for children and families this was reflected through the delivery of the whole programme and the commitment and insight of the trainers.

Anna Johnson, Innovation and Practice Development Lead, Our Way of Working, Partners in Practice, Cheshire West and Chester Council