NEW!
Kids Need...

By Mark Hamer

Parenting Cards for Families and the People who Work With Them

Jessica Kingsley 2008.

52 Cards and 32pp booklet

ISBN 978 1 84310 524 4

A creative approach

What is the difference between children’s needs’ and ‘wants’? How should parents respond to the demands of their children? Do all children need the same things?

Kids Need… cards present a creative approach to exploring children's needs and parents' understanding. Each card features a child’s ‘need’, for example ‘a room of their own’, ‘pocket money’, ‘to make mistakes’ or ‘to be criticized’, and participants are invited to place cards under one of the three header cards: ‘Kids Need’, ‘Kids Sometimes Need’ and ‘Kids Don’t Need’. The cards are designed to be flexible and adaptable, and can be used to encourage general discussions and negotiations within the family, as therapeutic tool, or as an aid to the assessment of parenting skills.

Kids Need… is a fun, accessible and effective game that is particularly useful to professionals working with parents and families, including social care workers, counselors and educators.

Kids Need... is a user-friendly tool (a set of illustrated cards and instruction booklet) that will help social work practitioners or therapists to work together with parents and carers in partnership. Kids Need… can have some very powerful effects with parents who are struggling.

Parents and carers like using them:

I have had some very positive feedback from parents who have bought the cards for themselves to use with their own families.

It is crucially important that service users participate in any assessment process. Some families are hostile to the whole assessment process and a shared task like ‘Kids Need’ can make the process easier for clients, enabling them to communicate more freely. It overcomes resistance and allows carers to feel that their existing abilities are valued, whilst keeping the child at the centre of the picture.

This is a non-threatening way for families to get involved in a deep and shared investigation of what children actually need and enables them to discuss the contribution they make in responding to those needs. It enables clients to explore the factors in children’s lives that positively or negatively influence their upbringing. And it makes it easier to voice those aspects of parenting where they may need to do things differently.

Contents (Instruction booklet): Introduction. Who can use them? Why use cards? Using the Cards. Recording the session. Solution-focused communication. A therapeutic tool. Cognitive dissonance. An assessment tool. Analysis and planning. How do the cards fit in with the Assessment Framework? The difference between saying and doing. It all adds up. Working with children and young people. Working with individuals and groups. More ideas. Ending the session. How long does it take. The Author. Acknowledgements. Useful Reading.

The Illustrations on this website are from Kids Need...

How to Order

Click here for the recording sheet (.pdf)

Read the reviews

Kids Need…

Cards for practitioners working with families and carers.

These user-friendly cards are for use by parents and carers, and anybody working with them. This is a tool that will help practitioners and parents work together in partnership to explore parents’ perceptions of what children really need. ‘Kids Need…’ is a very simple game which can have some very powerful effects on parents who are struggling.

Why use cards?

Using cards helps clients to feel relaxed; they don’t feel threatened or that they are being interviewed by somebody with a clipboard and a lot of questions with tick boxes. Cards help you to get closer, to participate, to open a real and honest dialogue. Closer to the reality of the clients’ life and so closer to the truth, (Hamer 2005). Direct work with families demands effective communication and engagement skills, (HM Government 2005) and using tools like ‘Kids Need …’ can aid practitioners to engage with individuals in family centres or the family home in a non-threatening and solution focussed way.

Who can use them?

The cards are for practitioners from any discipline whose role it is either to assess parenting or to work with parents and carers to enable them to increase their parenting ability.

Parents can use the cards themselves with their family to explore each members different perceptions of needs, wants and responsibilities, helping the different members to understand each others role and how they may conflict with other members needs and wants.

A therapeutic tool

The cards can be used either in either a therapeutic or an assessment context. Exploring the ideas on the cards can have a very positive effect on parents and carers and have been seen to lead to some positive behavioural changes.

The cards increase self-knowledge, promote self-motivational statements and create a context for planning to change.
They help carers to distinguish between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’.
They help carers to clarify their own understanding of how they may need to change their parenting.
They help carers to understand that their needs and their children’s needs are not always the same.
Using the cards can open up discussion about age appropriateness and help parents to consider how they will respond to their children’s changing needs as they develop and mature.
Often there is a difference between what people say they believe, and how they behave. The cards can help to develop a cognitive dissonance and this in itself can spark a positive change in parental behaviour. Parents and carers will often be seen changing their minds as they think through the issues they are presented with and realising that they need to take responsibility for things they hadn’t thought about.
Analysis is built in to the process.

Cognitive Dissonance

A powerful effect of the cards is to create a cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a critical difference between what people’s values are about how they should behave, and how they actually do behave. Giving people an opportunity to voice their beliefs gives them an alternative way of behaving. This is a powerful lever for change, the fact that they have discovered this disparity for themselves creates an uncomfortable situation where desire to change is maximised.

It is easier for people to change their behaviour than their beliefs so if their behaviour does not fit with their beliefs, there is a powerful subconscious drive towards changing behaviour in a way which fits in with beliefs. This is a theory devised by Psychologist Leon Festinger from Stanford University in 1957. Festinger claimed that people avoid information that is likely to increase dissonance and therefore discussing beliefs makes people more likely to change behaviour. The more important the issue is, the more powerful will be the dissonance. We present people with their own personal beliefs that, because of their possibly aspirational nature, conflict with how they act in a day-to-day way.

All assessment plants the seed of change. People seek reassurance for behaviour change and so for us as workers our role is to reassure the client after they have made a positive choice or expressed a positive belief by making statements such as ‘that sounds like a really good idea, yes that is really important…’ These cards provide a natural context for such behaviour change.

When a parent tells us that kids need fresh fruit and vegetables and that he likes to read with his children, it is likely to make him try to provide more of this. He is more likely to notice when he avoids doing these things because it conflicts with what he has said and that makes him feel like a liar. He has told you that he does these things and you have responded with ‘that’s excellent’ and so he knows it is the right thing to do, he has said so himself.

Cognitive Dissonance is a theory that is used in Motivational Interviewing and Brief Solution Focussed Therapy. You'll read about this in the booklet included with the cards.

An assessment tool

The cards may also be used as an assessment tool using a variety of frameworks. They particularly support the needs of practitioners in the UK using the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families. The cards will help you to work in partnership with carers, as recommended in the framework for assessment. To work in partnership you need to overcome resistance and to form a co-operative working relationship that allows carers to be respected whilst keeping the child at the centre of the picture. The cards will help workers to explore both needs and strengths, to explore the factors in children’s lives that positively or negatively influence their upbringing and to analyse and develop a plan of intervention. They are a non-threatening way to get involved in some deep and shared discussions about what parents/carers feel is important in a child’s life and what resources they are able to provide, and so they allow you to make good solid assessments based on an open and honest communication.

The cards may be used during the Initial Assessment phase but will be more suited when undertaking a Core Assessment, as the depth of information you can obtain using this tool is comprehensive.

If you are using the cards as part of your assessment process you will need to bear in mind that this, like any other assessment process is likely to create change.

The task when making an assessment is threefold:

Gather information.
Analyse how different aspects relate to and affect each other,
Plan an intervention based on that analysis.

DoH 2000

The focus of this tool is to take a holistic approach to assessment as intended by the assessment framework and to go much further than merely identifying ‘bad parenting’. Using these cards will allow practitioners to engage in a shared investigation, across all three domains, which acknowledges the expertise of the subject and allows them to engage in a full analysis leading to the development and promotion of protective resources and skills.

Analysis and planning

Analysis and planning are fundamental to this tool. Problems and solutions will present themselves as a natural part of the process. In the example above we have come to a point where the carer is saying that s/he feels tired all the time and possibly they spend a lot of time arguing. This opens up discussion about the nature, cause and participants of the arguments. If you do a similar exploration with each of the cards, you can see that pretty soon you are going to have a very clear picture of the strengths, the possibilities, the difficulties and the resources that the family has and a clear understanding of what resources may need to be provided. We are using the carer’s own understanding of how the family functions, his or her expertise in solving problems in the past, his or her resources and skills. With such an assessment we do not have to make any guesses at what needs to be done next.

How do the cards fit in with the assessment framework.

When we use the word ‘Needs’ in the context of these cards, we are looking at what parents and carers have to do and what they have to provide for the child, to ensure that the child’s needs are being met. With this definition it would appear that we are focussing mainly on the ‘Parenting Capacity’ domain of the Assessment Framework. In fact the cards have been designed to address every dimension of that particular domain. However as you will know the assessment framework is designed to be holistic, and the various dimensions interact with and influence each other. This requires careful exploration during assessment with the ultimate aim being to understand how those dimensions and their interactions affect the children in the family. The caregivers perceptions of all three domains can provide vital information.

Any holistic assessment is by definition going to explore more than just one discrete area, and you will find the cards useful when exploring parenting capacity and carers perceptions of all three domains of the framework. That is what makes this tool so powerful, you get a whole picture of the carers’ point of view that is not isolated in time or concept and that explores the ecology of the situation. In this respect it goes further than focusing on just one domain of the framework and allows you to explore the carers perception of the child’s developmental needs, the carers capacity to respond appropriately to those needs and carers perceptions of environmental factors which have an impact on the family.

There is an A4 a recording sheet on the website Click Here that you can download and photocopy. I have also numbered each of the cards to aid a quick recording of the session. The numbers on the cards have no other function.

Using a card exercise like this is far more likely to get you closer to the truth and to enable the carer to be open and learn to trust you, than many other kinds of assessment you are likely to come across.

Working with Children and Young People

The illustrations on the cards are designed not to be patronising to adults but also to be child friendly. The concepts on the cards are universal and easily allow workers to explore young people’s perceptions of what they are provided with and what they need. The process is the same as that used with carers, the only difference is that you are asking the children what they feel their own needs are. This can be very enlightening for young people, especially when they find themselves saying things like: “No I don’t really need Occasional Treats, it is just that I would like them more often than I get them” and “Well I suppose that I do need to go to school whether I want to or not, if I want to get a decent job. It is just that I don’t want to.” Workers also get a wonderful opportunity to enable children to understand that their parents and carers consider their wants but have to prioritise their needs.

The cards also give young people the opportunity to challenge the way things are, or to discuss the way they have been. Consider the impact on a young person who gets into a discussion with you about their need to trust adults.

Working with Individuals and Groups

The ‘Kids Need …’ cards can be used with families, groups or individuals. When working with groups or couples, they allow people to discuss in a non-threatening way, the differences in their priorities. With couples it is easy to create an environment using the cards where couples can negotiate priorities and their differing roles and responsibilities. The cards can also be used to open up discussion about the difference between needs and wants and to explore how children’s needs change as they grow and develop. The process again is the same except each participant can discuss their perception and have the opportunity of hearing how others feel about the subject. This opens up the opportunity for negotiation, sharing or dividing responsibilities and just accepting that sometimes it is a matter of saying ‘okay, you win this one but I really feel strongly about that one’.

Published Reviews for Kids Need...

The National Child Minding Association

March 2008

"... designed for Social Workers, Family Therapists, Counsellors and Possibly Health Visitors.

"When I read the information booklet and instructions on how to use the cards, I felt that it is a positive way to teach parents about parenting! ... if my Health Visitor used them I would be more than happy to take part! (as a childminder) "I did try the cards out on the children in my care (Aged 5, 8 and 12), just to see if the cards could be used in an educational way for them, rather than the parents! I was quite impressed!

"I transformed it into a little game, explaining that there is no right or wrong answer. I placed the cards down in front of us and drew cards from the pack. In turn, the children decided what they thought to each card. For example, one card said 'Fresh Fruit and Vegetables'. We had to decide whether Kids Need, Kids Don't Need or Kids Sometimes Need this. All agreed that Kids Need this. Another card said 'Trust Adults'. The 5 year old said Kids Need, the 8 year old said Kids Sometimes Need and the 12 year old said Kids Don't need! But this then led to a discussion about Strangers and how we can NOT trust ALL adults around us! ... without even realising it, I can educate the children about issues such as Healthy Eating, Protecting Yourself, Feelings, etc.

"The cards are bright and colourful and easy to read. The illustrations are also bright, cheerful and attractive to children. the pictures show a range of people of different genders, race, disability and colour. The booklet is easy to follow and the text is clear to me ... the book is small, so that it fits into the box of cards. I give these cards 8/10."

CAFCASS

June 2008

" This 'Critique' cannot criticise this set of cards in any way

" It provides a more informal methods of getting information in a non-threatening manner

" The picture format makes it an ideal tool for use with people with literacy problems, younger or the less able parent

" It could be used to good effect to facilitate discussion and open up dialogue

" I can envisage putting it to good use in Private Law (as well as the more obvious Public Law scenarios) as the cards would enable a parent to focus on their child's needs at a time when they are usually embroiled in their own emotional needs

" These cards could also be adapted for use with children and would be a fun way of ascertaining the child's perspective on their need

" Altogether a simple yet effective tool for practitioners and highly recommended

Joy Ripley"

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