‘Sparkling Moments’ : Changing the dominant narrative in meetings

Now iMatter 2024 is well underway, with some of our teams in the action planning stage, we wanted to share feedback on how some teams have implemented change to support staff sharing experiences.

Today, we hear from Dr Marie-Claire Whyte, Clinical Psychologist, East Renfrewshire CAMHS:

A powerful but small addition to the weekly East Renfrewshire CAMHS team meeting has been the introduction of sharing our ‘Sparkling Moments’.  This is a standing agenda item encouraging staff to share their experience of a time in the past week where they have overcome difficulties in the course of their work, redefined problems, had small successes or breakthroughs, or have felt the support of others in the service in doing the same. 

Sparkling Moments is a technique common to a form of psychological therapy called Narrative Therapy. In narrative therapy stories are viewed as providing meaning. The stories we tell ourselves and others, or the stories that others tell about us impact how we experience the world.  Therefore, whilst life is often filled with difficulties, there are always small gems of hope and truth which will challenge a dominant narrative.  Sparkling Moments encourage the identification of these small glimmers of light in a dark story, which can help redefine problems and obstacles as separate from ourselves, change our perspective in relation to them, and highlight resilience and core values.

Given our propensity in the West of Scotland to minimise or fail to share with ourselves or others when we are doing well, this was initially an uncomfortable process.  However, over the past few months staff have become very thoughtful about the experiences they share.  In particular, as a team we have become better at recognising good and helpful clinical and team practice, especially with the knowledge that there is a weekly forum for its acknowledgment.  This also has the effect of completing a long weekly team meeting with a sense of camaraderie, shared values and purpose, and a boost in mood knowing that others do notice when we are trying.

Our hope is that as we become more used to recognising and sharing with each other these moments in the course of our week, we further strengthen our shared values in the difficult jobs we do, and there will be further opportunities to raise awareness of them at other levels, such as Learning for Excellence and Excellence Awards.