The document discusses the role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality service delivery for social services working with homeless individuals, highlighting the importance of the caregiver-user relationship and the need for ongoing supervision and training. It describes a role-playing game designed for professionals to enhance their understanding of relational dynamics and improve care strategies. Participants shared feedback on the workshop, expressing its impact on their perception of homelessness and care delivery.

1. Quality in Social Services
From the Perspective of Services
Working with Homeless People
European Conference, Luxembourg City, 21 st October 2011
Workshop 8:
The role of skills and qualifications in
ensuring quality of service delivery
Paolo Brusa
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

2. Working with people experiencing homelessness
is an intervention of care
Let's handle it with care
&
make some distinctions between
its 3 structural elements
setting offer tools
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

3. the place or type of surroundings where something is
setting positioned or where an event takes place as its unique tool
everywhere an intervention takes place
there is an own setting
(a shelter, a park, a social service...)
offer the expression of readiness to do or give something if desired
it comprehends everything that we do or give
but only if it matches with desires,
aspirations & will of the receiver
Hard to handle
with care
the donor's debt
tools a device or implement used to carry out a particular function
as our particular function is care-giving,
the relation is the sole available tool
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

4. Working with people experiencing homelessness
is an intervention of care
where a care-worker meets a person experiencing homelessness
The care-work is structured around this relation
between these 2 persons with all their dynamics
the relation is not peer-to-peer -> significant role played by
user
A person entitled to
have needs that require
to be satisfied ............
emotions power
prof.
a person supposed to have something to offer
concerning the specific needs which are
expressed by the user in that specific setting
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

5. most urgent qualification is the capacity to read what is going
on within this relation
a work of art that requires to:
- be aware of personnel relational given position, role, power
- take full responsibility for what it is happening since its
position is structurally higher
- capacity to read within the lines of what it is going on with the
user in a specific setting & change position if required by
relational dynamics
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

6. most urgent qualification is the capacity to read what is going
on within this relation
a work of art that requires to:
- handle with particular care all power-trip, which are often implicit, &
might appear in forms of seduction, manipulation, aggressiveness,
recklessness, fixation to the rules, total and silent compliance …
- always doubt on his/her personal prejudices, in order to have them as
a positive allied to deepen the significant of the relational dynamics and
not as a predefined discrimination
- learn to read the movements of all the actors as part of a dynamic
process, where failure is not a value-driven meaning, but a peculiar stage
that requires extra-care
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

7. the relation of care can be represented by the Borromean Rings
-> in mathematics, quantum physic, various symbolism,
logic and psychoanalysis, 3 topological circles are linked to
form a Brunnian link
-> meaning that every time one ring is removed, the other
two remains unlinked.
-> no one of the 3 rings, by the fact of being wrapped by
another ring, is not itself wrapping another
-> within the relationship, each dynamic which is not
bound is binding, everything that is not brought to
awareness and consciousness becomes an action
-> this is applicable to all representations at every level of our work :
- setting, offer, tools
- personnel, user, institution
- wellness, hardship, symptom
- biography before homelessness, today needs, process of reinsertion
- inclusion, exclusion, shelter
- logical path in social policy, SSGIs offer, people biography
- physical domain, legal domain, social domain
- experience, skill, reality
…
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

8. older personnel with long experience is not necessarily skilled
younger personnel with high-level education is lacking experience
all persons face a variety of considerations, meanings, prejudices,
points of view, emotions, indications, needs & recommendations
each user is an individual
each situation is dissimilar
each day we all are a bit different
the challenge is to consider not solely a training programme, but
an on-going supervision.
The combination of these 3 levels can support personnel, users,
institutions to regain the inner sense of the work of taking and
giving care to people experiencing homelessness.
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

9. means learning through experience while
the experience comes from playing
is a role-play game specifically created to
help the workshop conduction for
professionals working in the social field
consists on a human-sized game board
that’s posed on the ground
participants are asked to take part at the
game as personification of various
institutions, of case studies, or of
general situations that might happen to
the topics at stake
The rules are very simple
It allows participants to develop paths to
MULTI POLIS awareness-raising concerning social, prof
and personal dynamics, in logical
framework focused on methodological
skills in giving/taking care
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

10. The game-board will Participants receive a
lay on the floor. case study card and are
asked to link and enter
their specific role
The participants start the role play
by throwing the foam-rubber dices
Following the dices sum,
the participant defines its
objectives and its path to
reach it
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

11. When the participant takes the situational
card, one of the observer is invited to
reach the red center of the board-game
While other
participants observe
with attention, the
role-play take place
The conductor always follows
the role-play to support,
control, address and guaranty its
correct development
The gaming-time is variable
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

12. When the role-play and the game ends, a
collective discussion and confrontation
take place in order to share individual
observations and reflections…
…that have been used to collectively
build up the contents that represents
the workshop outputs
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

13. To favour a collective free shareware, use and
evolution, Multi-Polis is registered under Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 ND
This means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
under the following condition:
BY ) Attribution -> you must give the original author credit
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work
You may share your output results with the community by sending the .pdf
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Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery

14. Comments from participants
… the session was like an experience of free-diving and breathing: free-diving, as when one remains
firm, still and silent as facing something new and unexpected like a new vision; and breathing, as when
one savours its beauty and potential ... psychologist 2010
… it is curious to see the relational traps in which we fall daily, to become reality in front of you …
social worker 2010
… for the first time ever, I've seen something that pushes the social workers to experience what
does really mean to be homeless … service user 2010
… I felt many things, I received many input, I perceived the fresh breeze of a way to work different
from all I have been told so far... social worker 2010
… we thought that your MultiPolis game would be worth looking more precisely... trainer 2008
… it gives opportunities to go beyond the traditional professional roles and challenges to explore
situations in an open way ... social worker 2007
Contact: Paolo Brusa
via Musinè 12-10143 Torino
tel. +39.011.1971 9353
mobile +39.333.222 32 89
mail info@multipolis.eu
web www.multipolis.eu
Quality in Social Services – Luxembourg City, 21st October 2011 Workshop 8
Paolo Brusa – the Role of skills and qualifications in ensuring quality of service delivery