The Contract Is the Basic Guiding Principle of Systemic WorkWork

At the end of the initial phase or initial interview, a contract should be set up between the helper and the client system. This chapter is concerned with the role of the contract in systemic work and how to design such a contract.

Contracts form the basis of all cooperation. They contain all the necessary stip-ulations, goals and duties of the parties concerned.

– A contract creates transparency: Both sides know exactly what they must do or refrain from doing.

– A contract furthers a sense of security: Both sides know what they are getting themselves into, what is expected of them, what they can expect of others, and what is not the subject matter of the intervention.

– A contract establishes commitment: A contract means being mutually obligated to comply with the arranged rules.

– A contract sets clear boundaries for the assistance: Whenever we agree on who does what and how we want to reach that goal, it also becomes clear what cannot be expected!

This is relevant not only for the initial phase and initial interview, which establish the framework for the entire intervention. Discussing and agreeing on a contract is an essential and continuous work principle of all systemic interventions:

– The present problems and concerns of the participants are discussed at the be-ginning of every session and the further procedure is agreed upon. The parties ensure that the agreements lie within the contractual framework, which may mean that some current (new) problem cannot be discussed because it is not part of the contract or would change the contract.

– Within a session the parties can agree to other, smaller contracts for the next step.

Case example: In an assisted-living facility for the mentally ill, Ms. Miller helps the female patient B. The two of them have agreed that Ms. B. should learn a different way of dealing with her withdrawal tendencies than simply sitting in her room all the time, failing to join the others in the common rooms and not participating in any recreational activities. This form of withdrawal tends to be the result of conflicts that occur when B. has contact to individuals from outside the facility. In the past, one could observe a pattern: conflict,

withdrawal, deterioration of mental state, patient enters hospital, patient is discharged from hospital, new outpatient program established with the goal of integration, new conflict etc.

Thus, this seemed to be a reasonable contract goal for the assisted-living facility. In the session Ms. Miller notices that the patient is hardly paying attention and is apparently lost in her thoughts. She mentions this and points out that they had agreed the last time to discuss the course of the patient’s contacts with others over the past week and to plan things for the next few days. Yet this is not possible if the patient does not pay attention. Ms. B.

agrees. She says she has been thinking of her grown daughter who rejects any contact with her. Ms. Miller suggests talking about this matter for 30 minutes and considering whether Ms. B. could somehow plan her contacts with her daughter and with her entire family differently in the future. Ms. B. agrees but doesn’t want to talk at all about the last fight she had with her daughter. That would stir up too many bad feelings in her. Ms. Miller accepts this and says that she will take care not to discuss the feelings connected with that fight. She asks whether the patient will agree to the suggestion of setting up all the persons involved in the form of little figures on the table (the daughter, the daughter’s husband, their two children, the patient’s father and mother, the parents of her son-in-law, etc.). The patient agrees and the two begin the session.

This example shows how discussing and agreeing on a contract becomes an in-tegral part of systemic work. There is the contract for the entire intervention (support for making and maintaining social contacts), there is the contract for the individual session, and there are contracts concerning the next steps in the overall course of the session (exploring the family context by means of symbolic figures). This discussion also includes clarifying what the patient did not want to talk about, namely, her feelings emerging from the last fight with her daughter.

This agreement clearly delineates the scope of the conversation for both sides.

Background Text: Why Do Systemic Therapists Speak of Contracts and Concerns?

If you want to make a good contribution to a discussion in a team or super-vision session of systemic therapists, it is advisable to first ask what the man-date and the contract in the case are. Everyone present will immediately con-sider this a reasonable and proper contribution: Your goal has been reached.

What’s the story behind this almost mandatory ritual in systemic circles?

First, a very practical explanation: When we go from a work setting with an individual client to working with an entire system, we meet with the fol-lowing problems:

– The concerns of the individual members will not always be identical – and these differences can be very explosive.

– If we fail to explain exactly what will be talked about and what won’t be, the system will suffer and have more problems after the session than be-fore.

– Especially if other helpers or institutions are involved, the procedure about how information is to be handled must be completely transparent.

Within the systemic approach – when compared to individual-oriented ther-apeutic approaches – we descend more deeply into the overall life situation of the clients in order to achieve change. For this reason, clarifying and de-termining the framework of the intervention is of utmost importance if the helper and the rest of the system are not to end up in chaos or serious entan-glements. And that means checking the mandates and contracts again and again.

But there are also some fundamental arguments that support contracts.

The systemic approach sees the clients as the true experts on their life (Rotthaus, 1989; De Jong & Berg, 2012, p. 46, 284 ff.). The relationship should be a cooperative one, where everyone is on the same level and the resources and competence of each partner are respected. This philosophy may also be found in the formal part of the helper-client relationship: ne-gotiations and agreements are carried out in an open and transparent way.

Steve de Shazer (1985) introduced the term “customer” into systemic thought – the informed customer one might say (Hargens, 1989). Jochen Schweitzer (1995) suggested the idea of “customer care as the service phi-losophy of systemics.” But customer care also means that we, as contrac-tors, have to be concerned with determining our customers’ needs and what they are demanding of us. If our offer fits the bill, then a contract is the next step.

This attitude can, with some modifications, also be applied when we are in a supervisory role, where it is also worthwhile to work closely with the clients to make the premises and course of one’s actions transparent and to agree with them on one’s own leeway (s. Chapter 4.1.6).

From Steve de Shazer’s (1985) differentiation of the three types of rela-tionships we can have with clients we can deduce additional, quire pragmatic reasons for making contracts. De Shazer differentiates the following types of clients:

a) Customers who want to change something and are willing to invest in this effort.

b) Claimants who want someone to listen to their story in order to complain about it.

c) Visitors or draftees who were sent by others and have no inherent reason to be there.

If you want to work a lot and achieve little, treat these three categories the same. Everyone else should note carefully who the client is and adapt the contract offers accordingly (see also Chapters 4.1.4 and 4.1.5).

4.1.1 How to Set up a Contract

Contracts for a specific intervention, for a session or for the next step of a session cannot be made at the beginning of an encounter with a client system – too much preliminary work is necessary for that:

– As with the initial interview, one must first establish a good basis for working together, consisting of good contact between the parties and an atmosphere of trust. It is important to establish a personal connectiveness in each and every meeting.

– The present issues and the motivations of those involved need to be thoroughly explored. Who wants what and why? What is that person ready to do (or not to do) to this end?

– The helper must also know what he or she can offer the system. This offer must be formulated by taking the institutional contract and professional demands into account (see Chapter 4.1.8).

Only now can the concerns of the client system and the stipulations of the helper be negotiated into a single agreement.

We are dealing here with many individual steps that both impatient clients (and counselors) have to take – a difficult mission especially when both sides are under intense pressure to get the help flowing. The clients often feel pressured to solve the problem as quickly as possible because they are suffering tremendously or fear seri-ous consequences. The counselor is often under institutional pressure to offer ade-quate help quickly in order to secure his or her facility’s welfare. But others, too, particularly those transferring the clients or footing the bill, can exert pressure to act.

Nevertheless, it is not wise to work without a solidly developed contract. Of course, there are situations where “first aid” is demanded and should be given; contracts are then added later. Or perhaps one starts by defining only the exploration phase and agreeing to close the contract later. Sometimes clients are so moved or so excited at the beginning of a session that the counselor must first simply try to soothe and reassure them before negotiating what should happen during the session.

4.1.2 What Does a Contract Contain?

Contracts usually have four aspects to them:

– Goals: Where are we headed?

– Tasks: Who controls, who brakes, who looks at the map?

– Setting: Who’s coming along, whose car are we taking, when do we get back?

– Information management: Who sends whom a greeting card?

Goals

What is the goal of the entire intervention, the next session, the next step? The mandates presented by the client system to the helper system form the basis of

such decisions. That is why it is important to first talk about issues and mandates before deciding on goals. The art of a good dialog about mandates and goals lies in advancing from general and imprecise goals to more exact goals (see Chapter 4.4). Vague goals such as “improving overall communication” or “supporting and consolidating the partner relationship” do not suffice for a work contract; they can, at best, indicate the general direction the work should take and thus be a starting point for further concrete steps. For this dialog, the solution-oriented questions formulated by Steve de Shazer can be very helpful: They invite the clients to describe their lives without the problem or symptom (see Chapter 5.3.2). It is also important to flesh out the goals very concretely so that we don’t cheat ourselves or the clients out of the successes. Only when the goals are con-crete and observable do we know when we have truly reached them and can rejoice at their completion. Such a dialog is also useful for discerning realistic and unrealistic goals.

Case example: A couple had just lost custody of their child, and the child had been placed in a foster home. Their mandate was to get their child back. This may be unrealistic and should not be made the goal of the intervention. Likewise, a couple’s mandate to help them get over the loss of their child from an accident as quickly as possible is not realistic. In both cases helping the couples with their normal mourning reactions could be a realistic goal, inasmuch as they are willing to go that route.

Thus, the task is not only to see what sort of mandates the clients have, but also to see which meaningful and realistic goal helpers can offer clients based on their professional competence and experience. That means checking whether the goal lies within the conceptional framework of the helper, the institution or the organ-ization paying the bill.

Tasks

Once the goals have been established, it is clear where we are headed. Now is the time to determine who will be in the driver’s seat – otherwise disappointment and anger will inevitably arise among the traveling party. This is especially true of large helper systems with many different involved institutions. Above all, the following should be clarified:

– Who does what and who does not (actions)?

– Who is responsible for what and who is not (responsibility and accountability)?

In an inpatient facility for children, the problem arises as to how the responsibility is to be divided among the Youth Welfare Office, the facility itself, the child’s therapist, the mother, the mother’s legal guardian, and the child’s grandparents.

In very complex helper systems it is not always 100% clear to the involved helpers which tasks the others have and what cannot be expected of them. Espe-cially clients who have little formal knowledge of how institutional support works may quickly lose track of which institution is in charge of what. This latter point is important for a successful cooperation and for the overall success of a complex system. But it is also the case even in relatively simple helper systems. Clients

intuitively have expectations about what helpers do and what they are responsible for:

– What can a client realistically expect from institutional family-welfare counsel-ing? Will they come and clean the house or raise the kids? They probably will.

– What can one expect from debt-management counseling? Do they pay the bills, balance the checkbook, write letters to the creditors and take care of everything else for that matter – that would be very practical!

– What can one expect from child guidance counseling? They’ll surely tell the daughter to stop behaving in that way and to listen to her parents more.

– Counseling, on the other hand, is real easy – all you have to do is go there once a week and spill your guts. That’s good because all your friends run away when you even mention the topic. And of course you can call your counselor any time you want in between.

There is a good chance that these intuitive expectations of the clients do not nec-essarily agree with those of the helpers. And perhaps the expectations the helpers harbor for the clients are also unknown to the clients:

– The life counselor may expect of a client that the client try out something new to relieve or resolve the suffering.

– The educational counselor may expect that the parents of adolescents also be willing to deal with their own problems and with their relationship with their child, to question themselves and to try out something new.

– Debt counselors may assume that they will give some clients only a few sugges-tions, and that clients will be able to watch out for their own accounts and deal directly with the bank and creditors.

A good contract thus clarifies the following:

– what help is to be offered and not;

– the limits of support and assistance;

– mutual expectations and obligations.

Clients should have a realistic idea of what the actual assistance will look like;

their own commitment should also be concretely spelled out.

Setting

By setting we mean the entire external framework of the intervention:

– For which period of time will we be working together?

– How long will the individual sessions last and how often will they take place?

– Where will we meet and what will be the rules of these meetings? If the meetings are to take place at the clients’ residence, it is important to ensure that the setting will be sufficiently undisturbed.

– Where will the evaluation take place? Who will be present? Clarifying this point is especially important if the recipient of the service and the person paying for it are not one and the same.

Information management

Questions pertaining to this area tend to get overlooked, though they are of major importance in more complex helper systems:

– Who reports to whom and in what form?

– Does the client system receive notice of such reports? Does it see the actual content of the reports?

– What effect will such a report have on the client system?

– What special occurrences must be reported by the helper?

– Who coordinates the helper system? Who is responsible for ensuring that information is passed on to the other helpers involved? Does someone have overall control of the project – is there a case manager for all supporting mea-sures?

These questions are of particular importance when social control is part of the mandate – and when clients would suffer severe disadvantages if the information were to be passed on:

– In probation counseling it must be clear how the probation helper is to deal with information received concerning other misdeeds of the client: When must the counselor report things to the court and what are the possible consequences for the client?

– In adolescent counseling, should the client’s family know that information con-cerning abuse (physical or sexual) has been passed on and what are the conse-quences thereof?

Background Text: Noncompliance with the Contract

The Power of the Counselor and the Independence of the Client*

What it means when contracts are unclear or not adhered to becomes obvious when we think about concrete situations experienced with clients. Imagine, for example, a family going to a family-counseling center for a session sched-uled to last 1 hour. Yet the counselor doesn’t stop after the prearranged period of time, apparently thinking that something is so important that it has to be discussed at greater length. The family, of course, wonders: “Is this going to last another 15 or 20 or 30 minutes? Will I miss some other appointment because of this delay? Well, he’s the specialist, he ought to know what’s best!

But should I contribute to what is being said or will that bother the others since we’re already over the time?”

As a client I am at the mercy of the counselor, unless I possess sufficient social competence to can say to the counselor (without endangering our re-lationship) that I am no longer able to concentrate on the conversation be-cause I’m so unsure of the timeframe.

4.1.3 System Politics: Open, Hidden, Contradictory and Ambivalent Mandates

Social systems always represent a web of interests and thus always have a po-litical dimension to them. There may be differing, even contradictory interests,

Social systems always represent a web of interests and thus always have a po-litical dimension to them. There may be differing, even contradictory interests,