Is Evaluation in Social Work FIT Enough?

Welcome back to the Social Work Café blog.

The latest episode of the podcast is all about getting FIT!

Ok, so maybe I don’t mean exercise, but this episode does encourage us to think about whether our feedback and evaluation processes with clients are fit for practice.

I always enjoy the chance to chat with Will Dobud, aka Docbud. When we talk about therapy, he always shares a wealth of knowledge, statistics, and interesting facts.

While much of our conversation was about the therapeutic context, Will mentioned outside of the interview that feedback-informed treatment is applicable in any social work relationship, so keep that in mind when listening to our conversation.

At the start of the conversation, Docbud reminds us that discovering social work is not always a straight line.

He was fortunate to have amazing mentors and teachers who encouraged him to go study and get his qualification.

Perhaps you have experienced something similar during your own journey of discovering and studying social work.

The experiences Docbud had at Montgomery College set him on a great path for his social work studies because, as he says, “I had learned how to learn.”

It is clear that Docbud internalised that approach because it not only served him well during his social work studies but also as he worked in the field and started wondering what really works with clients.

His curiosity led him to do a lot of follow-up reading and critical thinking, especially neuroscience material and psychotherapy research (click here for his book recommendation).

Eventually, this journey led Docbud to the legendary Scott Miller, a key figure in feedback-informed treatment.

I love how Docbud talks about emailing Scott Miller and offering to be his personal assistant.

Can you imagine doing that with a social work leader that you admire?

Maybe you should give it a shot, who knows what new connections you will form?

When it comes to embracing something like feedback-informed treatment, Docbud encourages us to ask some difficult questions about our own practice and to face some possible hard realities.

As Will said, there is quite a lot of evidence out there that people often disengage from or do not report great outcomes in therapy.

In order to change those outcomes, we must be willing to be humble and open about improving our practice.

Fortunately, feedback-informed treatment has some simple and straightforward tools that we can use with people in order to seek the feedback we need to keep improving.

Of course, tools alone are not enough; it is how we use those tools that counts.

Docbud highlighted the importance of the qualities that a social worker needs to embody, such as curiosity, respect, and genuineness.

In summary, we need to be doing social work practice that is directed by the feedback of clients, and to paraphrase Docbud, it’s about “client voice and choice” wherever possible.

At the end of the interview, we got to the question all interviewees are tasked with addressing: What is social work?

When he started talking about his hockey bag, I wasn’t sure he was going to give a straightforward answer, but then he gave a little gem of a sentence about being a profession that brings change to communities by working with people.

What do you think about his response?

Do you think his hockey buddies would like that answer?

I would love to hear what you think, as well as your highlights from the interview.

Dr. B

P.S. A final thank you and shout out to Will.

This interview was the very first one recorded for the podcast.

Will has been such a great mentor, teaching me how to record, edit, and get these episodes out to the world.

Of course, I will never forgive him for having me listen to the sound of my voice so much!