8 The Coaching Toolkit for Child Welfare Practice
The coaching process mirrors the
synergistic family–professional
relationships promoted in early
intervention and encourages staff to
adopt a self-correcting perspective,
which promotes continued learning and
improvement in professional practices by
fostering the perspective that an
individual’s skills should be examined,
discussed, and refined because they are
tools of the early intervention profession.
~ Gallacher, 1997, p. 203
In this toolkit, coaching incorporates a systems approach to
working with staff, which is similar to the practitioner’s approach to
working with families.
Tenets of Coaching
Coaching thrives when all parties involved understand and follow a
core set of principles. These tenets, adapted from the work of
Kathleen Gallacher ( 1997), guide and ground the parameters of what
is useful and appropriate in a shifting set of relationships and
circumstances: