Listening from more than one place
When I became involved in the Comparative Judgement project, which focussed on understanding what good social work communication sounds like in practice, I was not listening to the recordings from a single position. I listened as a parent with lived experience of children’s services, as a parent advocate who supports parents during difficult conversations with professionals, and as a researcher. Those positions are different, but they are connected.
My own lived experience helps me understand how communication from social workers can feel from inside the system. Advocacy has shown me that my experience is not only mine; it is also on the practising and receiving sides. Sitting beside different parents, in different situations, has helped me recognise patterns in how communication is received, what helps people take part, and what can make them shut down.
Through advocacy practise, I’ve learned to listen with professional curiosity. I listen to what is being said, but also to what is happening beneath the surface. Does the parent feel safe enough to speak? Do they understand what is being asked of them? Does the conversation leave them with more clarity or more fear? Research gives me another position again. It helps me step back from individual experience and think about what these insights can teach us about practice more broadly.
Using experience to judge practice
What interested me about the Comparative Judgement project was the way it treated experience as something that could inform the evaluation and assessment of practice, rather than just as something to be shared. Participants were not simply being asked to tell their stories. They were invited to listen to examples of practice, compare them, and explain what they heard. That is a different kind of involvement.
There is an important difference between asking people to share their experiences and asking them to use those experiences to help judge the quality of practice. Both matter, but they do different things. Sharing experience can help others understand what services feel like from the inside. Judging practice goes further: it invites people to draw on what they have lived, seen, and understood, and to apply that knowledge to real examples. For me, this is one of the project’s strengths. It recognises that lived experience is not just personal history. It can become insight. It can shape what people notice, what they value, and what they understand as respectful, helpful, dismissive or harmful.
When parents, care-experienced people and social workers listen to examples of practice, they may hear different things. A parent may notice whether the worker sounds genuinely respectful, or the conversation feels polite but unequal. A care- experience person may notice how a child or young person might experience the same exchange. A social worker may notice the professional skills, risks, uncertainties, and responsibilities that lie behind the conversation. None of these perspectives gives the whole answer on its own. Together, they can give a richer understanding of what good communication looks and feels like.
What parents hear
Through advocacy, I have seen how carefully parents listen when children’s services are involved in their lives. Like professionals do assessments with parents, parents do their own assessments in their minds, too. Of tone, body language, a worker sounding rushed; or only waiting for their turn to speak.
Communication in children’s services does not happen in a neutral space. Parents may be carrying fear, shame, anger, confusion, or painful past experiences with services. Social workers may be carrying worries about harm, safety, legal duties and professional responsibility. A conversation may look ordinary from the outside, but inside it may contain many layers of power, emotion, and uncertainty.
That is why good communication in not simply about being polite. It is about clarity, honesty, respect and humanity. Parent often need professionals to be direct with them, especially when serious concerns are being discussed. But directness does not need to remove dignity. Being honest is not the same as being harsh and being clear is not the same as closing someone down.
A simple question to ask when working with parents: do the parents understand what is being said, what is expected of them, and do they have a chance to share their views? If the answer is no, then communication has not done its job, however, professional it may have sounded.
Good communication should help people participate in decision-making. It should help them understand the concerns and the process they are involved in. It should build enough trust to discuss difficult topics. It should allow parents to respond, not just receive information. It should help people have a better understanding and make informed decisions.
Listening together
What felt powerful about Comparative Judgement was that it created a structured way for different people to listen to practice and say what they heard. It did not assume that only professionals can define quality. It also did not treat lived experience as symbolic. People can use their experience actively, as a way of thinking, judging and making sense of practice. That matters for how we think about improving social work.
If services want to understand whether communication is good, they need to hear from the people who know how it feels like to be on the receiving end. That does not mean replacing professional judgement. It means strengthening it. Social workers have knowledge that also matters. The question is not whose knowledge counts more. The better question is what becomes possible when different forms of knowledge are carefully brought together.
More than telling our stories
People who have lived through services often carry deep knowledge about communication, power and trust. They may not use professional language, but they can recognise when something feels respectful. They can recognise when a conversation gives someone space to think, or when it quietly shuts them down and when help feels real. That knowledge should be part of how we develop excellent practice.
For me, the Comparative Judgement project showed that listening is not a simple act. We all listen with what we know. We listen with our training, our memories, our responsibilities, our fears and our hopes. When people from different positions listen together, we may begin to hear practice more fully.
This is what lived experience, practice and research can offer when they are brought together, not just another voice in the room, but another way of hearing.
– Kar Man Au