The Good Stranger: Managing Intense Interactions Within Social Services Environments (Professional Series)

Encountering individuals who are struggling—whether due to mental illness, intoxication, instability, or advocacy conflicts—is almost inevitable when working in social services. Such situations often involve people who are emotionally flooded, confused, or have conflicting perspectives. How can you prepare for these interactions to prevent them from going awry while maintaining a calm demeanor and focusing on shared goals and successful outcomes?In The Good Stranger, Ellis Amdur and Robert Hubal share their extensive experience working with social service agencies to train and develop essential social interaction skills for handling intense, problematic situations. They emphasize the importance of establishing rapport, managing crises, and de-escalating aggression. The Good Stranger is someone who strives to reach accord with others, while maintaining focus on their goals, building trust and engaging others with professionalism, integrity, and respect."The Good Stranger by Ellis Amdur and Robert Hubal delves into the unique abilities of individuals who thrive in unfamiliar social settings, even without shared history, language, or culture. The authors bring the concept of “Good Strangers,” (originally developed by myself and Jonathan Wender in 2008) to a wider audience.Good Strangers are experts who navigate and create co-regulated interactions in tense encounters. Drawing from police and military studies, much of which they were involved in as researchers and practitioners, they have extended the reach of that research beyond its original scope into social service and clinical settings.Amdur and Hubal emphasize bridging social, cognitive, and perceptual divides within the full range of social interactions,not just those arising from mental health or interpersonal crises. Thus, it is a book that has a much wider scope thantexts on de-escalation and crisis intervention.The Good Stranger is an essential and practical field guide for anyone in social services who must coordinate and manage volatile situations, and the unique individuals and groups within them".– Brian Lande, PhD (Chief Science Officer at Polis-Solutions, founding program manager of the DARPA “Good Stranger” program, and veteran Police Sergeant).Published by The Ran Networkhttps://therannetwork.com Read more