Visible Progress — Practitioner Guide & Workbook

When conversations feel stuck, goals are unclear, or someone is struggling to recognise their own progress, Visible Progress provides a simple, structured way forward.

The Visible Progress Practitioner Edition is a practical tool designed to support collaborative conversations with people who want something in their life to change.

Rather than becoming stuck in what is going wrong, the approach helps practitioners and the people they support explore:

• Where the person wants to be
• What is already working
• The strengths, skills and resources they already have
• What has helped them cope or make progress before
• The people and supports around them
• What needs to be different
• The small, realistic next steps that could move them forward
• How progress can be noticed and made visible over time

At its heart is a simple principle: People are more than their problems — and progress becomes easier to build when we can see what is already there to build upon.

This tool can be particularly useful when:

• Someone feels stuck or overwhelmed
• The conversation keeps returning to problems without identifying a way forward
• A person's goals feel vague or too big
• Motivation is low
• Someone finds it difficult to recognise their own strengths
• Progress is happening but the person cannot see it
• You want to move from assessment into meaningful planning
• You need a collaborative way to identify achievable next steps
• You want to review change without reducing progress to simply "completed" or "not completed"

Who is it for?

Visible Progress has been created for practitioners working alongside people experiencing challenge, change or transition, including:

Social workers • family support practitioners • case managers • community workers • youth workers • support workers • counsellors • coaches • support coordinators and other helping professionals

It can be adapted across a range of community, family and human-service settings.

What makes the approach different?

Visible Progress is not simply a goal-setting worksheet. It encourages a different kind of conversation — one that creates space to ask:

• What do you want life to look like instead?
• What is already helping?
• What strengths are you bringing to this?
• How have you managed to get this far?
• Who is in your corner?
• What would one small sign of progress look like?

This can help shift the conversation from problems and deficits towards possibility, capability, agency and movement.

Grounded in established practice approaches

Visible Progress has been informed by strengths-based practice, solution-focused approaches, relational practice, person-centred and collaborative practice, and trauma-informed thinking.

What you receive

Your download includes the Visible Progress Practitioner Guide and Workbook, supporting you to:

• Explore the preferred future — Help the person describe what they would like to be different and what improvement would look like in everyday life
• Make progress visible — Use scaling and reflective questions to identify where things are now and recognise movement over time
• Identify strengths and resources — Notice skills, qualities, coping strategies, previous successes and existing resources
• Recognise the person's village — Explore the people, relationships and supports that may help them move forward
• Identify what is already working — Find exceptions, successes and moments when the issue is smaller or being managed differently
• Create achievable next steps — Turn a preferred future into small, realistic actions rather than overwhelming plans
• Review and build on change — Return to the tool over time to notice what has changed and what the next step might be

Designed to support conversation — not replace it

Visible Progress is intentionally flexible. You do not need to work through every section in order or complete the whole tool in one session. Use the elements that are useful, follow the person's language, stay curious, and allow the conversation to go wherever something meaningful emerges.

The workbook provides the structure. The relationship and conversation remain the most important part.

Created from practice

Visible Progress has been developed by Rachel Kemish, a qualified social worker with more than 27 years' experience across children, families and community services in the UK and Australia. Rachel's work has included frontline practice, senior leadership, practice development, training, quality improvement and the development of strengths-based and solution-focused approaches.

Download the Visible Progress Practitioner Edition and add a practical strengths-based, solution-focused tool to your practice toolkit.