Motivational Interviewing Training with Stoke on Trent City Council, Sept 2025. “The training was very informative and inspirational."

“Steven, you have been a fabulous facilitator, insightful, upbeat and positive. I appreciated the tasks and the conversations we had. I am feeling positive to deliver this practice in my developmental sessions. I will strongly advice managers and their teams to attend this training! I would like to utilize these skills in my work team, addressing performance and quality within Supporting Families Early Help.”

Greetings one and all,

I recently had the distinct pleasure to return to my old stomping ground, the always welcoming embrace of Stoke on Trent City Council.  This time it was deliver my two-day Motivational Interviewing (MI) course – ‘Inspiring Change Behaviour.’  As with all of my courses, it has had its annual spruce up.  The course now comes with three brand new training films that help reinforce the skills required when using MI with clients.  A massive thank you to my wonderful actors, all of whom who are people with ‘lived experience’ and yes, we know that phrase is getting very old hat, so what do we mean?  Well, I think what I mean is, they’re people who are now living in post-traumatic growth and embracing a new, more fulfilling existence.  And by doing so they are informing and educating people on how services can be improved.  They are demonstrating a trauma informed approach to every single person who makes that call, has a visit from a social worker or walks through the doors of the council buildings.  They’re the people they were always meant to be and actors to boot!  Well, actors for me and each and everyone of them knocks it out of the park – because after all they have been there. 

The assembled learners were from across various departments within children’s and each and every one of them really took to the skills.  Some of them had had MI training before and said they didn’t feel that it had really gelled with them before.  Well, this time each of them said, ‘blimey, I get it!’  Well, in their own way at least.  It was lovely to have managers on the training who both said that they would ensure that the various skills were embedded on their teams and reviewed via supervision. 

Collated feedback from Motivational Interviewing with Stoke on Trent City Council Children’s Social Care CSC Academy, Sept 2025:

“I have really enjoyed this training, Steven is really knowledgeable and experienced

and also had us all engaged throughout the two days. The time just FLEW! As a

manager, I really want to practice and use these skills in supervisions with my

workers and I will also encourage my workers to book on any further training from

Steven.”

“The training has been interactive, with activities and video case studies about

people from Stoke on Trent. I feel that the information shared by Steven will improve

my practice. I work with families and will use this as the basis. The principles of

Motivational Interviewing will help me to amplify the voice of the child, the families

and enable me to have much more rewarding relationship with children and families,

to enact change.”

“The training was very practical, which was better for me, more practical, less theory.

Steven created activities for each section, and the objectives enabled us to practice

what we were learning. There were opportunities to ask questions which were all

answered. I will be using MI in my practice as a Social Worker to get better levels of

engagement from people.”

“I absolutely loved it! Steve was very engaging and knowledgeable. It all made

perfect sense and I felt that I learnt LOTS! I can’t wait for more training with Steven.

Thank you Steve 😊”

“The training was very informative and inspirational. It will certainly help me to move

forward in my practice! Brilliant delivery - as always - thank you Steven! 😊”

“Very informative training, thank you very much, well delivered, I will definitely use

my MI knowledge going forward.”

“An excellent course, so glad that I’ve finally been able to attend. I will definitely be

putting MI into practice with the young people. Steven is a fantastic trainer. He

made the information, accessible, relatable and fun. There were plenty of

opportunities to engage with each other and practice our skills. Thank you so much

😊”

“I totally LOVED and enjoyed my training with Steven. It all made sense to me, I can

use what I’ve been taught in my day to day practice. I would very interested in

attending more training with Steven as he gets it.”

“The session was interactive, role playing was helpful, it made me understand how to

apply the skills that Steven was teaching us. I gelt that my learning will be put into

my practice. Steven made me reflect on my current practice too.”

“I have learned the six words to eliminate from my vocabulary! I will do this with both

my service users and in my private life too. Avoid the SMOG! ‘Why’ and ‘But’ and I

will always use reflective methods from now on.”