A seminar and workshop organised by the Perth and Kinross Partnership / University of Stirling Partnership to examine policy and practice in personalisation and community capacity. Interview with Karl Stern, Learning and Organisational Development Manager at Perth and Kinross Council, on the development of partnerships to improve the link between social work practice and research/academia. Focusing specifically on the partnership between Perth and Kinross Council and Stirling University, Stern speaks about three key areas of development: research, CPD and practice exchange.

Personalisation: Interpersonal Skills for Practitioners As the ‘personalisation agenda’ in social work gathers pace at the level of policy and service provision, there is an increasing need for individual practitioners to re-acquaint themselves with the skills and values of working with diversity and understanding the perspectives of other people and other lives across all service user groups. This workshop will introduce participants to a range of reflexive enquiry methods that draw upon the seminal ideas from Personal Construct Psychology (PCP). The main aim of PCP methodologies is to enable the practitioner to ‘stand in the shoes’ of their client - to see the world in the same way their client does, using the client’s language and the client’s ‘personal constructs’. Everyone has their own system of personal constructs and these are the ‘goggles’ through which they construe the world in which they live and which govern their behaviour. The value of a PCP perspective for social work is that it helps the practitioner to focus upon ways in which, in order to help people to change their behaviour, we have to help them to become aware of how they see themselves and key aspects of their social worlds. This workshop will offer opportunities for participants to examine their own personal constructs and try out 3 basic techniques that will demonstrate: • how personal constructs are used to differentiate between people, situations and things • how someone’s personal constructs can be explored to understand their personal and professional core values • how personal constructs inform behavioural choices - why, at some level of awareness, a person chooses to behave in the ways that they do, rather than in ways that we might consider to be better for them The workshop will be of practical use to students, practitioners and anyone interested in practice learning. Presenters: Dr Barry Cooper, The Open University, UK Nick Reed, University of Hertfordshire, UK