Miracles R Them: Solution-focused Practice in a Social Services Duty Team

Solution-focused practice has become increasingly of interest to front line practitioners in a variety of settings in the UK over the last decade. Gateshead may be the only authority in the UK to have seen an entire Social Services duty team incorporate the approach into its everyday practice. Secondment to an Identification Referral and Tracking (IRT, since renamed Information Sharing and Assessment) project provided the authors with an opportunity to research what had helped to bring this about and use this knowledge to design a ‘training with a difference’ approach to the extending of solution-focused practice to a much larger number and range of frontline practitioners both in Gateshead and neighbouring Newcastle.