Introduction

Previous Change

For

Against

Strategy

Unfreeze - Stage 1

Tactics

Change

Re-freezing

Conclusion

References

Bibliography

Appendix

Ground Rules

Background Work

Plan of Teaching Sessions

Home Page

Previous Change

About 10 years ago, a new strategy was devised to deliver parent education to Asian mothers in Alum Rock, a bus went around to different roads with the midwives and link-workers, allowing the Asian women to access information and learn about parenting skills. The idea came to the change agent when Asian women did not attend parent education classes, statistics were poor and this prompted a change. When speaking to the organiser of this strategy it was brought to attention that there was nothing wrong with their service but women were reluctant to approach the midwives and link-workers on the bus, but was not further explored. Yet another reason for the failure was response from the community as a whole. Pregnancy and childbirth are not spoken about within the Asian community, and the bus was not the ideal way forward at that time.

It seemed that the likely responses of the community were not taken into consideration in the first instance when planning the change. So therefore, it was not only the midwives who had a problem with the change but also the community in Alum Rock which, included the older members of the families and a great threat came from the leaders of the mosques. The reason behind this was that they were not consulted about the idea and felt the new change encroached onto their community and altered their ways, so they forbade they daughters and wives to access the bus so the change failed tremendously. The aim is to reintroduce the change again learning from previous experiences of others and minimising the forces against it (forcefield analysis – Cross, 1996). This bus shall include midwives, link-workers and also support volunteers.

However, when we are trying to implement a change there will be forces operating in our favour and against the change process. This technique developed by Kurt Lewin (1951) has been used extensively in change programmes across a wide range of environments and has proved to have worked well (Hunt, 1996). It helps the change agent to focus on the forces for and against the change.