Advanced Forensic Interviewing Skills

Facilitator: Dr Caroline Logan (UK)

Cost: £650 inc VAT

Duration: 2 Days

Clinical interviews in forensic settings present practitioners with challenges additional to those present in interviews conducted in more mainstream mental health services.  The forensic clinical practitioner is faced with multiple but sometimes conflicting tasks in the conduct and management of interviews with clients.  For example, practitioners must gather relevant information, but often relating to subjects that the client is reluctant to talk about in detail (e.g., offending behaviour).  Also, as the client is not the principle ‘customer’ in forensic clinical evaluations – the assessment and treatment of forensic clients is frequently at the request of courts, the parole board, multi-agency public protection agencies – confidentiality is limited or non-existent and the client is often unwilling or reluctant to engage for this reason.  Therefore, motivating the client to engage in forensic clinical interviews can be a substantial component of the time taken to undertake them. 

 

Such a diverse range of tasks requires the flexible application of a very broad range of clinical skills.  Yet in spite of all these considerable demands, clinical interviewing skills are a modest component of most professional practitioner training courses.  Consequently, the specialist skills required by forensic practitioners are often only acquired through experience – trial and error – and are dependent on the lottery that is the availability of good quality clinical supervision by a more experienced practitioner.  This is unfortunate and increases the risk that clinical interviews in forensic settings will not achieve the outcomes envisaged by practitioners, regardless of their skills in more general clinical interviewing techniques and in specific assessment and therapeutic processes. 

 

This workshop examines the clinical interviewing skills required by practitioners – psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, and counsellors – working with clients involved with forensic mental health and correctional services.  The workshop will involve a range of practical exercises as well as teaching to address the following learning objectives: 

(a) improving the knowledge of participants about the applications of a range of potentially useful forensic clinical interviewing skills;

(b) developing the self-awareness of participants as regards their own interviewing style;

(c) extending the specialist skills participants may apply to enhance their control over future forensic clinical interviews and the quality of their engagement with their clients.