Listen to thisHy Resnick
It is a commentary on child care work that sometimes the biggest problem facing staff and management is not the direct handling of the children in care but rather in dealing with the more seemingly mundane administration matters such as the handover situation – the handing over of responsibilities for the unit from one shift to another – and getting it right.
For many reasons the handover situation usually has a number of problems including:
Misleading, inadequate or biased communication between the shifts
Tension and even conflict between the shift staff
Kids being able to “con” the staff
A climate of finger pointing and blaming
Erosion of the effectiveness of the treatment plan
Some of the causes of these problems include:
1. The skilled manipulation by the kid clients;
2. Poor information giving or poor information listening skills of staff or management ;
3. Different handling approaches/styles of staff or management ;
4. Poor management oversight;
5. Staff or management favoritism of some kids;
6. High turnover of service delivery staff.
1. Skilled manipulation by kid clients
Many of our kid clients are quite skilled in the art of manipulating
staff. They are quite capable of dissembling by telling an incoming
staff member that she is mistaken when she tries to follow through on a
suggestion from the previous shift . “I didn’t do it . It was Johnny” is a well known excuse of a savvy kid who knows how to avoid
responsibility for some behaviors occurring in the previous shift.
2. Poor staff information giving and
receiving skills
Sometimes the staff on a shift isn’t precise when informing the next
shift either what happened between some kids in the unit or/and the
incoming staff doesn’t do active listening to the message and gets it
slightly wrong.
3. Different handling approaches/styles
In child care agencies today many of the staff come from different
educational programs or cultures and consequently have a wide variety of
theories to underpin and guide their practice with kids resulting in
different approaches to kids. These different approaches can result in
different ways of dealing with kids . Its quite possible that staff with
differing theoretical approach’s will interpret a handling order from a
staff member for a specific kid differently. This can lead to confusion
of the kid and resentment of the staff member who recommended the
handling order
4. Poor management oversight
Management has the responsibility of making sure the handover procedures
are clear, well understood by staff (and management too) and is
realistic. When they don’t insure that the above is institutionalized in
each of the units, problems will surely occur.
5. Staff or management favoritism
All of us suffer from having special affinities/feelings for some kids
and not others despite our efforts to professionally deal with such
feelings. We may not even be aware of these emotions – the consequences
of this favoritism can be “softer” handling of some kids than others by
staff.
6. High turnover of service delivery
staff
Probably because of the low salary, sometimes unpopular schedules, youth
of the staff , difficult kids and organizational tensions/problems there
is high-turnover of service delivery staff which can result in poor
understanding of handover procedures/practices by new staff who need
time and experience to “get” the procedures right.
What to do?
Establish a staff-management working party to create a process to improve the handover procedures. The following process might work: Select one or two staff representatives from each of the shifts to meet (on their own) with the following tasks:
Meet with the kids and obtain their views about
the handover situation and come to agreement on:
1. The major handover problems and then
2. A list of possible action steps that need to be taken by
management and staff to improve handover procedures
Submit the above as recommendations to the staff-management working party for review, fine tuning and final decision making.
Schedule an all-day retreat focused on the handover recommendations. Then specify a time when the new procedures are to take place.
Task the staff-management working party to evaluate the new procedures in a period of one or two months and report the evaluation to staff.
By developing a jointly arrived at plan created by both staff and management using a true participatory process , problems in handover situations can be substantially reduced.
