Direct Work With Children and Young People: A Social Work Tool Kit

The Munro Review highlighted that the only way to create a “child-centred system was for Social Workers to have the time and skill to undertake a great deal more direct work with children. I posted about this in Direct Work with Children and Young People: Houses and Faces and described a couple of activities that I have found particularly useful in the past.

Direct work with Children and Young People demands time, skill and creativity. It’s about more than simply asking the child “how are things at home?” and whilst pen and paper may be sufficient for some children, others may need different media to make sense of their wishes and feelings. That’s why I find it particularly helpful to have a ‘Social Work Tool Kit’. It’s nothing fancy – many of the items can be kept in a small bag/box in your car and brought out as and when they're needed. Most Social Workers will already have an idea of what’s useful to them and the children they work with; but after receiving a couple of emails on the subject I wanted to post my recommendations. So, here they are… (*There are affiliate links embedded in all the pictures)

Pens for taking notes, minutes, form filling and everything else. 

Pencils for the same reason as above but they're also good for using with children if they want to doodle on your note book. 

Paper to complete paper based activities or simply for children to draw on. I've found Ikea to be particularly good value.

Conversation Cubes are useful in initiating a conversation with children and young people. Depending which cube you opt for, questions include "who is your best friend?", "what foods do you like?", "what is your happiest memory?" and "name a time you were scared". 

I mentioned the Todd Parr Feeling Flashcards in a previous post on direct work. They're excellent in helping Children to navigate and understand emotions.  

Expression stickers can also be used to help children to navigate and understand emotions. They are particularly useful when asking children to assign an emotion/feeling with a particular person or event. Social Workers can write a persons name or event down on a piece of paper, invite the child to assign the relevant sticker, and explore this further in conversation. Or you could just use them as an engaging activity because kids love stickers!

Play Dough is a fantastic resource in direct work with children. I wrote about how I've used it in practice last November and included a recipe to make your own. If you'd rather the bought stuff, there are some fab mini tubs that don't take up too much room.

Finger puppets are useful when employing a story stem technique. The Social Worker asks the child to "show me what happened" through the medium of play. 

A wooden doll family is also used with a story stem technique. Have a look at my post on Assessing Attachment in Young Children for information on how to integrate this into practice. 

Finally, I think every Social Worker should own a copy of Direct Work with Vulnerable Children. It’s primarily a set of playful activities to create opportunities to engage children. Through these activities children are enabled to tell their stories and provide Social Workers with assessment and support opportunities. 

Thanks for reading! Please let me know what's in your Social Work Tool Kit by commenting below.