1.
COMMON ERRORS IN DIRECT PRACTICE
 Knowing how and when to correctly use social work
interviewing skills provides the foundation for helping
relationship.
 Developing the competence to utilize the skills is a
learned process.
 Skills are not used in isolation, but in conjunction with
each other as a way to further deepen and expand the
relationship.
 Social workers strive to ask the “perfect” open-ended
question or deliver the “perfect” paraphrase.

2.
1. Interviewing pitfalls
1.1. Advice giving
• Social workers should not tell the client what to do to
solve the problem.
• It is vital to the helping process that the client be an
active participant in the therapeutic relationship.
• People often know what they are supposed to do, but
they are unable to follow through with this
prescription, and keeps them from moving forward.

3.
 Advice giving also subtly conveys that the person
shouldn't be upset, after all, the problem can easily be
solved with the advice you provide so quickly. In other
words advice giving minimizes their concerns.
 Advice giving fails to take into account a person’s
unique experience and situation. Telling people what
they “should do” implies that we know what’s best for
them, when they are the experts on themselves.

4.
 If people choose to follow our advice, they are the ones
that actually have to live with the consequences,
weighing the costs and benefits of each decision that is
made.
 Advice giving hardly defines someone’s options. There
are typically many ways to handle a problem and for a
social worker to say . “this is what you should do”
limits the available options.

5.
 Although people who are seeking help often ask “what
should I do?” telling them what they should do falls
short of truly helping them.
 Clients benefit by developing their own problem
solving skills, so they can answer future questions and
find solutions for themselves.
 Offering advice can sometimes curtail the necessary
expression of emotion about a situation.
 Jumping to advice giving is a way to stay removed from
the other person’s experience .

6.
 In therapeutic situations, we are going for a deeper
level of interaction by allowing the client to explore
and vent feelings about a situation, we are able o use
empathy and enter into client’s experience (Corcoran,
2012)
 Social workers should not give advice regarding the
ends or major life decisions that clients have to make
for themselves.
 Once a client has made a decision that involves the
end point or goal, giving advice about how to reach the
goal can be very helpful and instructive.

7.
1.2. Inappropriate use of humour
 Humour is a way of defusing the emotions and anxiety
clients’ face when working with a social worker.
 This suggests that it is humour, which allows the social
worker to ‘appear more approachable.”
 Social workers often want to be seen as humorous as
the opposite, humourless individuals are valued less by
society and are less likely to have successful
interactions and relationships with their clients.

8.
 Humour is common to human existence and it is
possible that humour has a unique potential for
demonstrating particular characteristics of a social
worker,
 So when applied sensitively and appropriately it could
be a useful tool to enable social workers to help clients
manage their own emotions.
 When a social worker uses humour inappropriately,
the client can feel belittled, criticized or mocked

9.
 Clients may believe that you are minimizing the
problem and not taking them seriously (Kadushin &
Kadushin, 1997).
 If the social worker makes an inappropriate comment,
it could deeply anger the client.
 The social worker may find humour in the client’s
situation, but the client may not have the same
subjective perspective.
 Inappropriate use of humor can also convey that the
social worker is not empathic or sensitive to the client’s
point of view.

10.
 For example, John is a 45 year old client who is
frustrated because he has been unable to find a job.
 Cracking a joke about becoming homeless or begging
on the streets is ill timed and insensitive.
 John will assume that you are not taking his
unemployment situation seriously and will feel foolish
for coming to you in the first place.

11.
 Certainly, humour has its place in any human
relationships, and it can lighten the tension.
 Sometimes the best thing to do in a crisis is to diffuse
some of the seriousness with lightness, to allow the
sadness to be lifted with hope (Brems, 2001).
 Laughing and humour can also help the client see the
situation in a different light.
 In the counselling relationship there may be
humorous moments, however, that should not detract
from the professional helping process.

12.
1.3. Interrupting the client and abrupt transitions
 In the course of an interview, social workers ask many
questions.
 The social worker who is attuned to the client is an
active listener and aware of the verbal and nonverbal
cues signifying that the client has not finished
speaking.

13.
 Having made the decision to effect a transition, the
interviewer has to watch for a logical point at which to
smoothly terminate the topic under discussion and
introduce a new topic.
 This raises the question of perhaps the most abrupt
transition of all-interruption of the interviewee by the
interviewer.
 In the face of a determined nonstop interviewee,
interruption to effect a transition may be difficult.

14.
 The interviewer may need to be clear in regaining the
initiative , this may require a sentence like “ permit
me, I know I am interrupting, but I wonder if I can say
something about this? Or “ May I interrupt for a
moment, please”.
 In trying to regain control of the interview from a
talkative interviewee the interviewer needs to use a
transition with a lead in:

15.
I appreciate your sharing these experiences with me,
but I wonder if we can continue our discussion of----
It is very nice hearing all about your grandchildren, but
because we have limited time, we should focus more
directly on----
 But be cautious. Interrupting when you cannot justify
the interruptions in terms of the needs of the
interview derogates the interviewee’s autonomy, and a
struggle for status and control of the direction of the
interview may result.

16.
 Frequently, inexperienced interviewers tend to
interrupt when such an intervention is not clearly
warranted.
 The interviewer intervenes and takes control of the
interviewee before it is clear that the interviewee has
finished.
 This tendency is another carryover from some habits
of conversation, when we interrupt each other
frequently with impunity and without apology.

17.
 There is some ironic justice in the oft-made comment
that nothing is quite annoying as to have somebody go
right on talking when you are interrupting.
 Transitions that are abrupt-for which there is no
preparation and that might appear to the interviewee
to be illogical- are apt to be upsetting.
 Interviewees know what they were doing and
suddenly, the interviewer moves them to something
else, and they aren't clear how they got there or why

18.
 Frequently, the significance of the topic the
interviewer is introducing is not clear to the
interviewee, no matter how obvious the connection is
to the social worker “ transitions to new topics require
(interviewees) to stop and think, to relocate
themselves; this may be necessary, but it tends to be
unsetting (Weiss, 1994:80).
 Preparation for transition, then, should include some
explicit statement of the relationship between new
content and the purpose of the interview.

19.
 The interviewer should be aware that the need for
focus that is served by using transitions may be
antithetical to the need for rapport.
 In some instances the interviewer may have to sacrifice
focus for rapport and permit the interviewee a greater
freedom, even though this is clearly unproductive in
achieving the specific interview purposes.

20.
 It is best not to make a transition to other content
unless you can spend some time on the new material.
Whenever the context of the interview shifts, both
participants have to readjust their perception of the
situation.
 Transitions that are too rapid and too frequent may
signal that the interviewer has no clear idea of how to
conduct the interview and does not know what is most
relevant to discuss.

21.
1.4.Inappropriate and irrelevant questions
 As social workers we are inquisitives about our client’s
lives.
 We are interested in asking them questions about what
makes them tick, however, be careful not to over
question a client.
 Asking too many questions may make the interview
seem more like an interrogation than a helping session
(Egan, 2007).
 Use questions to get only needed information.
 Irrelevant questions do not produce new and helpful
information

22.
 The social worker doesn’t have the inherent right to all
information about the client, only the information that
is essential to the helping process.
 Seeking information about the client that is not
relevant to the presenting problem may feed the social
worker’s curiosity and interest, but is not in the client’s
best interest.
 This is a misuse of the client-social worker
relationship.
 Asking questions unrelated to the problem can also
cause a lack of focus in the session

23.
 Examples of problematic questions:
Client: “ I work day and night; I never have enough
time with my family. And, if I am with the, I fall asleep”
Social Worker:” You really don’t mean that you fall
asleep, do you?”
 In reality, the social worker is telling the client how she
thinks he should respond. This may cause the client to
pretend to agree.
 Controlling or intrusive questions-ignores the client’s
agenda and needs and instead focuses on the social
worker’s interests, usually for some personal reason

24.
Client:” My company is going down the tubes. I have
no money set aside. My wife is so angry at me for losing
the business. She is starting to pull away too”
Social Worker:”I don’t want to focus on your marital
finances right now, please tell me about your sexual
practices”
 In reality, the social worker is meeting her own needs,
her curiosity about the client’s sex life versus the
financial difficulties within the marriage. Or
conversely, the social worker may be comfortable
talking about finances and steers clear of more
intimate material

25.
1.5. Judgmental response
 The client is coming to the social worker with help, not
to be judged.
 Part of the social worker’s role is to understand the
client’s problems, with that understanding, the social
worker helps the client to find solutions to the
problem.
 If the client perceives that he or she is being labeled or
judged, a defensive response may occur that can delay
or impeded the development of trust between the
client and the social worker.

26.
 This could create further difficulties in the helping
relationship because the client will not feel
comfortable discussing personal information and may
view the relationship as an adversarial one (Hepworth
et al, 2010).
 As a social worker, it is sometimes difficult to separate
our personal feelings, values, and beliefs from our
professional values and obligations.
 Part of a social worker’s professional development
includes accepting clients who may have very different
values, perspectives and life styles.

27.
 Respecting differences and not expecting clients to see
the world the same way as the social worker is a core
social work value.
For example: Lisa is a 30 year old female who recently
came out to friends and family about her relationship
with her partner, Milly. Today, Lisa discloses that she is
exploring the possibility of becoming pregnant through
artificial insemination.
The social worker responds negatively to her plan,
stating, “ Its one thing to be a lesbian, its another
to bring a child into this.

28.
Have you thought about how your child will be
affected by your decision?”
Lisa will likely react with disbelief, in part because up
to this point the social worker has appeared supportive
of her lifestyle.
Now that the social worker’s true feelings (judgments)
have surfaced, Lisa is likely to respond defensively and
with anger and therefore withdraw from the helping
relationship.