Analysis and critical thinking when working with children and families
Develop confidence and skills in making analytical and defensible decisions when supporting children and families.
Social care practitioners make decisions that have a significant impact on other people’s lives.
In this workshop, participants will develop their confidence and skills in making analytical and defensible decisions when supporting children and families.
Designed for
Family help and social care practitioners working directly with children and families.
Learning outcomes
As a result of attending this workshop participants will be able to:
- Define analysis, critical thinking and defensible decision-making, and explain why these are important.
- Use models that support these concepts, including the Anchor Principles and Wonnacott’s Discrepancy Matrix.
- Explain the importance of child and person-centred approaches in thinking processes.
- Reflect and debate the roles of equity, diversity, and power when considering thinking processes in practice.
- Discuss the skills and techniques that support analytical recording.
Booking information
This is a full day interactive session delivered via Microsoft Teams and you are encouraged to contribute with the aid of break-out rooms, the chat function and large group discussions. Participants will benefit from having a quiet space to work without interruption. Slides will be sent out after the session.
Research in Practice Partners can use their membership allocation to book this workshop. Link Officers can use the booking request form to book this workshop. Please only use this form if you are authorised to choose your organisation's membership allocation.
Once your booking is received, our learning team will work with you to confirm a delivery date and provide relevant information.
The deadline for booking this year’s online workshops is 17 October 2025.
Organisations that are not Research in Practice Partners can commission this workshop individually by contacting our learning team.
Critical reflection and analysis: Learning Pathway
This Learning Pathway explores why critical reflection and analysis are foundational to effective practice in social care and provides tools and reflective questions to build on your skills and knowledge.
Analysis and critical thinking in assessment: Resource Pack (2014)
The handbook includes key research and practice messages around analysis and critical thinking in assessment. It combines research evidence with the practice experience of agencies to explore how identified barriers to good assessment might be overcome. The focus is on ‘thinking in practice’ and, above all, on supporting practitioners to be more analytical in their assessments.
Defensible decision-making in children’s social care - resource pack for practice supervisors: Frontline Briefing (2022)
This open-access resource pack has been developed to support practice supervisors to; facilitate reflective and analytical supervision discussions which inform defensible decision-making; ensure that each child’s social care record demonstrates evidence of defensible decision-making, and promote team-wide discussion and shared learning about defensible decision-making with practitioners.