Roadworthy skills

David Kranz

I worked in telecommunications as a technician for the first eleven years of my work life. By the late 1950’s, my interest in community activities led to a switch to social work. I formally trained at the University of Adelaide. I worked as a Probation Officer in the, then, Children’s Welfare and Public Relief Department and, later, established the District Office at the developing satellite city of Elizabeth. After ten years at Elizabeth, I worked as a Personnel Officer in the State Public Service Board. During the early 1970’s, I was appointed as Senior Staff Development Officer in the ‘restructured’, Department for Community Welfare. My first task was to train social workers — in eleven months — to staff the expansions created by Prime Minister Whitlam’s ‘Australian Assistance Plan’. I could teach plenty of concepts and ‘models’ — but not how to apply those concepts or implement those models in a ways that could confidently predict successful outcomes. That drove me nuts. The old technician in me could describe, exactly, each successive step from lifting the telephone handpiece to talking to whatever number I dialled anywhere in the network! I yearned to find similar reliability in the process from greeting a client to having them know how to achieve what they needed to achieve to live more effective and fulfilling lives. In 1976, I learned both this reliable process and the sequenced skill steps to employ it from the researchers who identified them. Teaching others these skills has been my passion ever since.

I did a few other things whilst at Staff Development Branch. I chaired the National Committee to set up training strategies for the Australian Assistance Plan. I set up and convened two intensive international training programs for social welfare administrators from African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Island countries — and hosts of local programs — but, in the last thirty years, none were as satisfying, or productive, as the ‘skills’ programs.

Vicky Sanders

I trained as a social worker in the UK and started out on my social work career full of compassion, goodwill, and a head full of ‘expert’ ideas from the then therapeutic theorists. My first years in the job did not satisfy, so I experimented with working with different client groups and different organizations hoping to find a ‘fit’. However, despite working with a wide range of people including: homeless families, disabled persons, those with mental health problems and the elderly, I was still dissatisfied. Moreover, after six years like this, I found myself in managerial positions, with even more training under my belt, trying to assist staff to find the satisfaction that I lacked. I still found myself saying to myself that despite the training, the organization, or the client group, at the end of the day I still couldn’t really be sure I had helped anyone!

Eventually, at the age of 29 I was offered a job in the Department for Community Welfare in Australia. I planned to come and to just enjoy the experience of working with the indigenous population for a while and then return to the UK after a couple of years. However by chance, I ventured into the training being run by David, fresh from his experiences with Carkhuff and Associates in the USA. Within a few hours, I had my epiphany! Here was what I had been searching for all these years —a set of skills that, if honed, could lead to predictable helping outcomes! I learned and applied the skills, for myself and others, and discovered that they gave me what I had been looking for, for so long. The discovery pushed me to move beyond my comfort zone, as a ‘one to one’ person, to gradually becoming a trainer of these skills. My working life changed dramatically. I eventually left the Department for Community Welfare and developed a private counselling practice. With David, I shared various training programs with many different groups. We both led training programs with other trainers for different target groups. We developed applications for the ‘Human Technology’ and forged a working business partnership as Human Resources Development consultants using the skills we taught. I added a BEd and MEd to my qualifications and lectured at the University of SA in communication skills (for undergraduate Builders, Planners, Engineers etc) and counselling skills (for postgraduate counsellors, teachers and health workers). I also got involved in the ‘professionalising’ of counselling in Australia and was the foundation President of the Counselling Association of South Australia and was its delegate at the formation of the national Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia.

Working together

The first few programs that David ran generated such positive feedback that the Director General of Community Welfare supported a proposal to establish a special unit to offer training to other departments. We were especially keen to train educators for two reasons. Firstly, we because we loved Carkhuff’s (the researcher) perspective that ‘Welfare fishes bodies out downstream: the task is to teach people to swim upstream’. Secondly, because we could create a ‘multiplier effect’ by teaching teachers who, in turn, could teach by modelling — if not overtly!

Just weeks before the proposed start dates the Government’s ‘Razor Gang’ axed the funding for the new unit. David spat chips when the news broke. He expected Vicky to do the same (in florid Lancastrian), but what she said was, ‘Well, the ‘how’ has changed, but the ‘what’ is still the same’. So we worked out what to do!

We did a deal with Education Department that we would run the programs at no expense to them, so long as they agreed that their Research Branch undertook a full evaluation of the outcome of our work. It was agreed. David took six months long service leave on half pay, and Vicky worked for a negotiated honorarium of twenty dollars per week.

We had a smug brag to ourselves that we were on ‘ekirts’ — that’s ‘strike’ backwards. We reasoned that strikers take collective action for personal gain, whereas we chose to take personal action for collective gain. The research findings were positive.

After a bit more politicking, David was seconded to the Education Department for about two years, and Vicky led training teams in a number of other government departments — with positive evaluations from the Public Service Board’s researchers. We also trained lecturing staff from the Psychology School at the, then, South Australian Institute of Technology, (the current University of South Australia) and introduced skills training into the undergraduate programs.

David retired from the Public Service in 1986 and joined Vicky’s business. We later developed, managed, and taught in a suite of accredited counselling courses, from Certificate IV to Degree level that has earned a reputation for producing quality counsellors in the field. We have taught in the Masters in Counselling for the University of South Australia on a contractual basis for many years both in Adelaide and in Hong Kong. We sold our business in 2004 in order to retire. ‘Roadworthy skills’ is our ongoing contribution to counsellors and other helpful people.