Unpicking social work practice skills: Warmth and respect in practice

Abstract

Warmth and respect are considered essential skills for relationship building in social work. However, these skills are often treated as common sense, and how to be respectful and warm, particularly in challenging situations, remains unclear. Practice guidance is commonly given as a list of generic behaviours or vague directions. Furthermore, it is not clear how being respectful or warm leads to effective relationships. In this article, we applied conversation analysis to examine transcripts of video recordings of 12 sessions of ‘Moving Forward: Making Changes’, the national groupwork programme addressing sexual offending in Scotland, to outline and specify the interactional practices that constitute instances of respect and warmth in social work practice. We found practitioners demonstrated warmth and respect by recognising and acknowledging clients’ accounts and identities in the interaction through subtle discursive practices. These practices include using hedging words and phrases (e.g. sort of, maybe), framing challenges as questions or suggestions rather than declarations, and using therapeutic phrasing (i.e. ‘I’m curious about’, I’m wondering’). As such, we propose the actions of demonstrating respect and warmth are achieved in interaction through the ways practitioners delicately manage issues of epistemic authority, that is, a person’s primary rights to knowledge about themselves, and face, that is, self-presentation. Drawing on the concepts of epistemic authority and face furthers our theoretical and practical understanding of the practice skills of respect and warmth, and their role in building effective working relationships.

Pedagogical Innovation with Sense? A Seminal Experiment of Service-Learning in Gerontological Social Work

“…These competences are intricately woven into the profile of a social worker, as highlighted by various authors. Mullins and Kirkwood [47] emphasize the indispensable skills of respect and warmth, which are deeply rooted in the core values of social work. Davis [48] underscores the importance of characteristics such as being present, listening, hearing, assessing, advocating, empowering, and helping, all of which are greatly valued by service users.…”

Co-constructing desistance narratives in probation interactions

“…Here we see the subtle conversational work practitioners and clients do to support desistance and also hold clients responsible for their actions. Using this approach, we have explored different aspects of probation-in-practice, such as how practitioners and clients respond to ambivalence and encourage desistance (Kirkwood, 2016), how shame is dealt with (Mullins & Kirkwood, 2019), how risk is incorporated into client narratives (Mullins & Kirkwood, 2022a), and how warmth and respect are enacted in practice (Mullins & Kirkwood, 2022b). Examining practice in this way helps us develop a deeper understanding of how probation practice can effect change, and can support practitioners to reflect on practice (Kirkwood et al, 2016).…”