Spirit in the community

A SPIRIT IN THE COMMUNITY

LESS WRESTLING MORE DANCING

Ian Healy

WITHIN AND ALONGSIDE

• Translating the spirit and principles of MI.

• The ‘expert’ as redundant

• The Community as autonomous

• Collective consciousness

• Free will

CEA

• COLLABORATION with community

• EVOCATION what your presence evokes/inspires community to enact

• AUTONOMY community as autonomous collective

AFFIRMING NOT RIGHTING

• As an activist your intention is to affirm positive community dynamics

• You are not there to ‘put right’ the community

• The implicit moral agenda as judgemental; denying.

MI CORE PHILOSOPHY translated per community context

• Environmental conditions typically evoked by Community resistance

• Activist – Community relationship as collaborative and friendly

• Resolving Community ambivalence prioritised

• Activist as non prescriptive

• Community as responsible for own progress

• Activist works to assist Community in determining its own locus of effectiveness/efficacy

• Miller & Rollnick {2002} MI as: -client centred -directive - pro intrinsic motivation -exploring & resolving ambivalence

PRINCIPLES

• Expressing Empathy

• Developing Discrepancy

• Supporting Self Efficacy

• Rolling with Resistance

THE INQUIRING COMMUNITY

• Collaborating with the Community to enable its own curiousness about its own change process.

• Modelling empathy.

• Encouraging meaning making.

• Reflections on behaviour and its consequences.

STAGES OF CHANGE

MI FLOW

IN SEARCH OF MOTIVATIONAL DIALOGUE

• MD as a conversational approach.

• Seeking to engage people in change orientation.

• Their lives and within their communities.

• A consciousness of where they are in the change journey.

• Common understanding of what will help.

CHANGE WHEEL INTERPRETED

• Non acknowledgement of need for change-lack of community consciousness

• Growing community acknowledgement of such a need

• Conscious community commitment to change

• Community becomes active-taking responsibility for own change process

• Identifying and acting upon a focus for change-what is needed; what support for process.

• Change orientation as endemic-a focussed and collectively owned change habit

RISK

• Relapse can happen at any time

• Exit at any Stage

• Political infighting

• Elitism

• Resistance

RETENTION OF COMMUNITY CENTREDNESS

• What is the Community’s agenda for change?

• How was it arrived at?

• The centrality of non directedness.

• Community worker as humble practitioner not seeking to prioritise a discreet agenda.

FOR GENUINE CHANGE

• Communities will genuinely change when they are ready and willing.

• Pushing them provokes resistance and dilution of the effectiveness of the change process.

• Interventions to be aimed at community ownership of the process.

INTERVENING PURPOSEFULLY

• Skills and dispositions appropriate to the Stage of Change

• How are you enabling the Community to own its own change process?

• How might you be corrupting this process?

• How is the dialogue enabling clarity?

REMEMBER YOUR OARS

• Open Ended Questions

• Affirmations

• Reflective Listening

• Summaries

TRUST BUILDING

• Constructing a relationship founded on TRUST & ACCEPTANCE {assignment intervention-check}

• Tuning into the Community’s Wisdom {assignment intervention-check}

• Establishing initial Priorities {assignment intervention-check}

THE OPEN ENDED PRACTITIONER

• How can we help you with……?• What can you tell us that will enable us to

understand what you need?• What is it that you want to change?• What do you want to be different?• Can you tell us about the pluses of living

around here?• What about the negatives?• What previous attempts at improvements

have your tried/• Where might you be prepared to start?

AFFIRMATIONS

• ‘It’s really useful that you are prepared to meet with us today.’

• ‘That feels like a really constructive suggestion to…..’

• ‘As a team we are feeling very positive at the ideas that you are coming up with to develop this area.’

REFLECTIONS AND SUMMARIES

• ‘ We are getting a strong sense that you would like to see quite a change in the facilities here. All of us feel enthusiastic in wanting to work with you. In essence you appear to be suggesting that……’

• Sometimes briefly repeating what’s been said by the Community members

• Summarising• Paraphrasing• Reflecting feeling

CHANGE ORIENTATION

• Pay particular attention to Community responses suggesting a desire for change.

• Include this emphasis in summaries etc

SUGGESTIONS OF THE NEED FOR CHANGE

• ‘We know that if we don’t do something about how the area has become it will be too late soon.’

• ‘If we don’t try to do something ourselves sooner or later they will take the Community Centre off us.’

• ‘At long last there are enough of us who want to make a difference but we are not sure what.’

• ‘We’ve had enough and feel sure that we can get something done if you are prepared to help.’

• ‘We’ve been talking about this for ages and some days we really feel that we can get started. Other days it all seems a bit too much ; it’s as if the area will always be for losers.’

ARE YOU BEING HARND?

• HUMBLE• AUTHENTIC• RESPECTFUL• NON-DIRECTIVE

• How are you doing this; how do you know?

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE

• Communities are experts in their own environments!

• They live there!

• Understand.

• Ignore/Avoid.

COMMUNITY DIALECTIC

• Certainties .v. Uncertainties

• Aspirations .v. Fears

• Ambivalence-tensions, contradictions

• Degrees of willingness to contemplate

• To change.

A PART OF ME IS NOT MD!

• Moral agenda…..maybe confrontational

• Telling

• Urging

• Persuading

• Unsolicited advice

REFLEXIVITY IN THE COMMUNITY

• What’s at the root of my/our involvement?

• What is my/our intrinsic motivation in working with this community; sub group?

• Am I being solicitous?

• What function does my concern serve?

Is the Community ready and willing to ask itself?

• How do we need to change if we want to enjoy an improved environment?

• What are we looking to improve?

• Why? How? By when?

• With what resources? Within what {whose} boundaries?

QUESTIONS FOR OURSELVES

• What assumptions am I/we making?

• How am I challenging my own {colleagues’} assumptions?

• What are my/our expectations of the Community?

• How am I/we sharing them/to what extent?

• Degree of transparency?

WHEN A COMMUNITY GETS STUCK

• Resistance………denial

• Problem what problem?

• Change? What’s the point?

• ‘You’ll never change people around here….’

• ‘It’s just the way we are…..’

• ‘We want things to be the way they used to be….’

• ‘In our day none of this would have been allowed.’

• ‘What’s the point in you lot gettin’ involved? They’ll only go an’ mess it up again.’

• ‘We know you mean well an’ all that but we don’t share your god and in any case what would people think?’