Gate-keeping - opening possibilities.
Solution Focused Practice Notes #5
Some Solution Focused practitioners have more than just a single therapeutic role. Sometimes they may also be ‘gate-keepers’ to resource or they may be perceived by the client so to be or talked with as if they were.
So what are your best hopes from our talking together?
Well what we have come to this meeting hoping for is that Sam can get more support in the class-room . Other children with similar needs have much more TA time than Sam does and we think that it would make a big difference?
Well we have been really struggling with Toni for a long-time – you know that – and we think that we have come to the end – we haven’t wanted her back in care but we can’t see that there is any alternative now.
We were hoping that you could write a letter to support us being re-housed.
In all of these examples the client is requesting a service of some sort that does not relate to the primary therapeutic task of the Solution Focused practitioner. As therapists we are change agents and the contexts within which we operate are the contexts of thinking, feeling, acting and relationships. However if we are also gate-keepers, or perceived to be such, then we have to do our job or at least clarify that the decision is someone else’s and indicate an appropriate path-way to that person who can make the decision. Having done so there may still be therapeutic possibilities if the practitioner can shape a conversational opening that is interesting, maybe even attractive, at the very least acceptable to the client.
Let’s look at a simple example. An ex-member of the BRIEF team was working in a secondary school in London, (where we have offered a service for over 20 years), and she is asked to meet with a 16 year-old student as a result of an incident. She starts by focusing, albeit somewhat unusually, on the incident, asking ‘so how did you manage to keep your temper?’, an opening question that much have pleasantly surprised the young man. And it is not until 10 minutes later that she asks him what he might want from the session, another question that appears to surprise him and he responds:
‘I don’t know – whatever – now yeah – I mean I kinda sort of got a youth worker but I want to get a real youth worker . . . I don’t know where to go to but . . .’.
The worker responds:
‘What would you be hoping would happen if you had a youth worker? How would you think that would benefit you – what would you be looking for?’
And the young man answers:
‘I don’t know – talk to me and help me out – take me out on trips or something – to calm me down and things.’
So one of the things that the client wants is ‘calm me down and things’ and this is something that a Solution Focused Practioner could focus on whether or not the ‘youth worker’ materialises. As it happens the worker, very rightly and appropriately, takes the ‘youth worker’ request seriously and takes the appropriate action but what she also has is a conversational opening for a Solution Focused process. She could for example ask ‘would you be pleased to see yourself beginning to calm down even more even before the school have found a youth worker for you?’ and if the client answers ‘yes’ she can ask ‘so let’s imagine that tomorrow at school you notice yourself that bit calmer even though you haven’t yet got a youth worker, what is the first thing that you would notice?’. Increasing calm has now been separated from the necessity for a ‘youth worker’. There is a new possibility.
Of course the same ‘opening of possibilities’ is potentially achievable in each of our three earlier examples with the key ‘transition’ question in all three being ‘and what difference are you hoping that that would make?’. So let’s take the first example.
So if the family were to get extra support for their child we can ask ‘and what difference are you hoping that that would make?’
‘We’ll if he had more support he’d find school easier and be doing better and perhaps he’d want to go in in the morning rather than being awkward and arguing’.
‘And if he wanted to go in, and he was doing better in school generally, what difference do you imagine that that might make for all of you at home?’
‘Well he’d be less stressed and we’d be less stressed and we’d all just be happier – well we certainly would and I think that Sam would too.’
‘Sounds like that would make a real difference?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if while we sort out whether there is the possibility that Sam can have more support in school, and we will be doing that, if we could do some talking so that Sam ends up a bit less stressed, a bit keener to come in, and all of you ended up happier, might that be worth it to you? If we can?’
And if the client answers ‘yes’ the worker has the invitation that they need to do some work.
So what needs to be remembered when fashioning these conversations openings? The framing should never be either/or? Whenever possible it should be both/and. If the client is invited to believe that if the talking therapy goes ahead and it makes a difference that the child will not be considered for care, or additional support or even re-housing then there might be a reluctance to engage. The work can take place ‘while you wait to be re-housed’, ‘while we see what resource is available for Sam’, ‘while the department assesses what we can offer with Toni’.
Evan George
London
08 March 2026
