QuickWins

31st May 2016

What is a Quick Win?

Another way of describing these are as 'low hanging fruits' - easily achievable goals that have obvious intrinsic value to the young person or their family.
This may be the case even though such 'wins' may not easily fit into the stepwise progression towards a previously agreed major treatment aim (see Formulation and Treatment Aims), such as completing a Cognitive Behavioural programme, in order to reduce avoidance of social situations.
If a young person expresses frustration or loss of interest in work towards a previously agreed goal, then it may be possible to preserve their sense of being taken seriously, and understood, by avoiding going to "head to head" over our different intentions, but instead to find some other activity that re-connects our intentions. The hope is that in feeling understood, and helped once again, the client may renew their curiosity about the potential value of other ideas (and plans) in the worker's mind (see Epistemic Trust for an explanation of the mechanism that underlies this.)
This is a good example of the principle directing workers to Roll with Resistance in Motivational Work: in order to preserve the experience of Contingency in what is offered, so as to preserve or bolster Epistemic Trust, it may be necessary for the worker quickly to change direction (at least temporarily) away from planned work, towards more obvious, shorter-term gains.

Examples of QuickWins might include:

  • Tidying up a chaotic bedroom (or a corner of a bedroom!)
  • Filling forms for a benefits claim (may not be quite so quick!)
  • Buying some new clothes (internet, shopping mall?)
  • Connecting one or other parent to a relevant adult service.
  • Registering with a GP.
  • Simply "going for a coffee/burger" to get a breatherr, etc...

How to use Quick Wins

The ideal situation is to keep a stock of possible QuickWins available, so that if treatment seems to be stalling, or engagement is faltering one of these could be focussed on to keep a sense of momentum and 'potency' in the intervention as a whole.