Child risk and parental resistance: Can motivational interviewing improve the practice of child and family social workers in working with parental alcohol misuse?

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a client-centred, directive counselling method. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a two-day workshop in MI for forty social workers in changing self-reported practice over a three-month period, the levels of skills achieved, and factors associated with acquired skills, including the impact of postworkshop supervision. The focus of training was alcohol misuse but participants were encouraged to explore the use of MI with other issues. A multi-method pre and postdesign was used, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data and employing an embedded randomized controlled trial of the impact of supervision. The two-day workshop had a modest positive impact on evaluations of simulated practice, on some measures of attitudes to working with problem drinkers and in qualitative accounts of practice. Despite this, three months post-workshop, workers generally had not reached a skilful level of MI practice as measured in ratings of an interview with a simulated client. Offer of post-workshop supervision had little impact on skill, with take-up being low. There was a significant difference between participants in the two workshops, despite identical programmes and trainers. Qualitative data suggested that participants had found the training useful and many reported a positive impact on their practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract)