What is Contracting?

Contracting is a tool to help build partnership and start to form a  helpful and purposeful relationship. Contracting is reciprocal - both sides both listen, acknowledge, and contribute. 

It introduces you, your role, what you do and what you're bringing to the relationship. It provides clear information so the family can make informed choices, feel valued, listened to and appreciated. 

The family can introduce themselves, and tell you more about their hopes and expectations.

The aim of contracting is to reach agreement on how you'll work together and build your relationship. This sets a good foundation for the building the trust needed to do all the work that is to come, and to show mutual respect for each other. 

How Do I Contract?

Parents have told us so often that sometimes the simple questions are the best ones - how are you, how are the children, what do you need, how can I help. That always feels like a good place to begin. 

The things you might explore during contracting might include:

• Does the family know why I am here?
• What help does the family want?
• Does the family want to work with me? 
• Explore the family's wishes, their preferences, what works well for them, how they like to receive information (for example email vs whatsapp, mornings vs afternoons)
• Explain what you do and your role, what you can offer and what you can't, and how that fit with what the family want to achieve
• Explain limits “we don't have a magic wand but we will try really hard to help solve problems as much as we can"
• Talk about honesty "it’s okay not to tell me everything, but my intention in asking is always to be helpful and to make sense of whats happening for you"
• Learn about the family's past experiences with support services, whats worked, what hasn't, their expectations of you, their hopes for having you in their world
• Enable the family to learn something about you, including what you hope to bring to the relationship, what partnership means to you, your expectations and goals

• Agree ground rules for example mobiles switched off during meetings, being on time, how long your meetings together will be, how often you will contact them, what to do if you are late or can’t make it. etc

It is helpful to regularly re-contract with a family throughout the work, to help keep the relationship strong, and the partnership helpful and purposeful. See the 'Tools for Review' section for some ideas

Here's a helpful prompt card to support contracting