
Intervention and Skills
Use judgement and authority to intervene with individuals, families and communities to promote independence, provide support and prevent harm, neglect and abuse.
Social workers engage with individuals, families, groups and communities, working alongside people to assess and intervene. They enable effective relationships and are effective communicators, using appropriate skills. Using their professional judgement, they employ a range of interventions: promoting independence, providing support and protection, taking preventative action and ensuring safety whilst balancing rights and risks. They understand and take account of differentials in power, and are able to use authority appropriately. They evaluate their own practice and the outcomes for those they work with.
Practitioners at this level should:
- Communicate with compassion and authority in challenging situations and with resistant individuals.
- Routinely explain professional reasoning, judgements and decisions.
- Engage effectively with people in complex situations, both short-term and building relationships over time.
- Gather information so as to inform judgement for interventions in more complex situations and in response to challenge.
- Use assessment procedures discerningly so as to inform judgement.
- Develop a range of interventions; use them effectively and evaluate them in practice.
- Expand intervention methods and demonstrate expertise in one or more specific methods relevant to your setting.
- Make timely decisions when positive change is not happening.
- Actively support and initiate community groups and networks, including professional ones.
- Clearly report and record analysis and judgements.
- Demonstrate and promote appropriate information sharing.
- Use contingency planning to anticipate complexity and changing circumstances.
- Recognise and appropriately manage the authority inherent in your position.
- Demonstrate confident and effective judgement about risk and accountability in your decisions.
- Regularly undertake assessment and planning for safeguarding.
Evidencing your capabilities:
This domain requires you to demonstrate that you can engage with service users by using a range of communication skills. You are advised to think carefully about the concept of engagement. You should be able to show how you have developed a professional relationship with service users, including when they show resistance. You should be able to demonstrate that you have taken their communication skills and needs into account when understanding their circumstances. However, good communication on its own is not enough. This domain is also how about how you then intervene to promote independence, provide support and protection, prevent unwanted outcomes or ensure safety. Think about the purpose of your intervention. This is often set out in legislation. You should demonstrate how you have planned your intervention, used your authority and recorded what has happened.
You will need to draw on evidence which describes your communication and assessment skills. Case examples should help you to do this. In addition, this domain requires some evidence of what you do to help service users. You should try to consider those examples from practice which you think show how you have improved the circumstances of service users. Recording systems and processes might also provide some useful material.