SERVICES | MI FOR SOCIAL WORK

Motivational Interviewing (MI) for Social Work

Do your clients have trouble taking full responsibility for the consequences of their actions?

You can respectfully encourage them to take responsibility for life altering decisions, and the consequences that follow.

Are your clients motivated to overcome challenges and change behaviour?

You can help each one find and build their intrinsic motivation.

Do you want to prevent work-related stress which could lead to burnout?

You can experience less stress, prevent burnout, and save yourself time and energy in interactions with your clients.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) as a proven tool

In my over 20 years of experience teaching and using MI in organizations, I have seen unbelievable successes, and you can too. My services are designed to give you the skills to respectfully respond to people in difficult situations. The result is not only better outcomes for your clients but reduced work-related stress so you can find and maintain a healthy balance at work.

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Socialsekreterare som gör grupparbete inom Motiverande samtal (MI)

Helping You with the Hard Work of Change

As change agents, helping professionals are very compassionate and empathetic people. Our soul purpose is to support others to help themselves and find their own ways of reaching their change goals.

However, helping people change is hard work. As an MI-trainer and coach for over 20 years, I witness the immense workload that helping professionals struggle with daily. I see how staff are overworked, stressed, worn out, frustrated, and feel inadequate. And I see how they continue to push themselves and put the needs of their clients first, often risking their own mental health.

I’ve been there too. And it wasn’t until I was introduced to MI in my early years as a Program Leader in the Prison and Probation Service in Sweden, that I started to both help my clients achieve their goals and reduce my own work-related stress level.

Here are three things that I learned.

Lesson 1

You are not the only expert

MI teaches us to share the responsibility of change with your clients. You are NOT the only person who knows all the answers or has all the solutions. That’s why you have your client. Your client is your sounding board, and vice versa. Share the onus of change with your client. It will do you good.

Lesson 2

Everyone wants to make their own decisions

Self-determination, also known as autonomy, is a basic human psychological need that we ALL have, even our clients. Going against that is useless. MI will teach you to show acceptance and instead, strive to support and promote your clients’ autonomy. This helps your client be ready, willing, and able to choose the road to change.

Lesson 3

Using MI saves time and prevents burn-out

Once you really understand and have embodied lessons no. 1 and no. 2, your work-related stress level will be reduced by leaps and bounds. Your will see MI as more than a way of helping your clients but also as a method of self-care . And, this way, you can continue doing what you love for many years to come.

Workshops, Training, and Coaching Designed Specifically for You

My services are tailored to your organization and each participant’s learning styles and needs. All my training and coaching services embody MI’s spirit and communication style by including reflective and empathic listening and practicing various conversational techniques for effective communication. I bring MI to life with relatable training, coaching, and real-world examples. My job is to encourage and support you in your journey to:

Help you apply MI in your daily contacts with clients.
Highlight your strengths in conversations.
Further develop your MI skills in a fun and meaningful way.

With introductory, advanced, and refresher workshops available both online and in person, I assist helping professionals in their work with the following client target groups.

Children and families
Youth
Elderly
Physically and/or developmentally challenged
Individuals suffering from psychological problems
Unemployed
Individuals in need of economic assistance
Addictions
Domestic Violence
People engaging in criminal activities

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Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist | NovoVia Consulting | föresläsning vid boklansering Kraften i snacket

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“Jennifer has a fantastic ability to adapt her trainings to the area in which the participants work. I have participated in MI trainings where the trainer could only provide real-life examples from the field of addictions. During that time, I worked with the elderly and it was difficult to relate MI to my field because the trainer could not provide exercises or real examples of MI use in elderly care. Jennifer easily adapts to the field we work in and can give examples and exercises related to our specific area of work, which makes it much easier to take in, understand, and apply MI.”

- Anna, Social Worker

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for an incredibly rewarding education. I really appreciate that you take into account our different learning styles, and that you created positive learning conditions through your playfulness and creativity. I also appreciated that you use different learning techniques such as videos, flipcharts, games and quizzes, in addition to your digital presentation.

- Lotta, Social Worker