The Role of Questions

If you’re going to undertake a parenting assessment, or an assessment of a child’s needs, or any other type of assessment, you cannot do so without asking questions.

You have to ask questions in order to gain a picture of what has gone on before, understand things from your client’s point of view, grasp an understanding of how a family see things, the problems they may be experiencing currently, or have done historically.

Questions facilitate an understanding of the events that gave rise to the current situation, the level of responsibility a person assumes for the current circumstances and their attitude to change and working with professionals?

There are all sorts of enquiries that may need to be made. You may have to make enquiries with regards to other family members and other professionals and you may ask questions for a variety of different reasons.

At times you may ask questions for very specific reasons such as the need to gain an insight into a child’s world, ascertain a child’s wishes and feelings, clarify matters which are in dispute, or find out about those who comprise an individual’s support network.

More generalised questions are posed when you are perhaps seeking to grasp knowledge of the wider picture, trying to get to know them better and identify the relevant people it would be helpful to consider in your enquiries.

There is a skill involved in asking questions, in knowing when to ask questions that are appropriate and/or how to do so sensitively. It’s very useful to know when to ask questions, at a time when the person being questioned is more likely to be receptive to answering them.

Here it helps tremendously to have been able to establish a rapport with the person concerned, to be receptive to and sensitive to their needs, emotions and experiences.

Of course listening intently and having the ability to demonstrate empathy are critical skills that have to be employed in order to both develop a good rapport and see things from their viewpoint.

When you are able to see things from their point of view you are in a key position to know when and in which way to frame your questions in order for them to be effective, or responded to.

There are also incisive questions which when asked highlight crucial information on which your recommendation may be based. For example, when a child is exposed to harm on a continual basis you might elect to pose a question framed specifically to reveal whether the harm occurs by default or by design.

But in addition to the questions you have to ask of others there are questions you will need to ask of yourself. When you digest the information in any given case, it poses questions requiring answers.

There may or may not be common patterns of behaviour, or incidents of violence in which it is not clear whether, for example, the child was exposed them. Or to what extent the parent/s attempted to protect their child from distressing events or incidents.

A range of questions or matters that require investigation will likely spring to mind and the quality of the questions you ask yourself and others will to a large extent determine the quality of your assessments.

If you think about any the problems you face in life, in your relationships, or when matters have not gone well in a work situation or a project. In hindsight you can often identify the questions that you could have asked, but neglected to do at the time.

But perhaps even more significant than the questions we ask of others, are the questions we pose or fail to pose to ourselves, which have the greatest impact on us.

As we are creatures of habit we tend to make the same or similar mistakes over and over again, until something happens which causes us to take note, and ask ourselves a child’s most frequent question: “why?”