Part 1: Living theory action research and Adlerian psychology: The alongside approach of a health visitor

Abstract

When a mother asked a health visitor to help her get her son to sleep at night, the solution was found in ‘alongsideness’. This article is the first of two reporting the findings of a collaborative enquiry that continued over 4 months to understand and explain their learning. Part 1 focuses on the health visitor, Robyn's account. In part 2, the mother, Ruth, considers the implications of the collaborative enquiry process of helping her son to sleep, for understanding her future parenting. She reflects on her experiences of health visiting and the process of talking about it. In part 1, Robyn explores the influence of living theory research and Adlerian psychology on alongsideness. She finds her ‘alongside’ values for health visiting also appearing in the alongside way of managing baby sleep difficulties they had used. Alongsideness is an approach that suits the aims of the Health Visitor Implementation Plan, and living theory methodology is offered in addition to the Family Partnership Model for promoting practitioners' understanding, as well as improving, evaluating and explaining what they are doing. In this process, intuitive actions and learning, tuned through experience, become conscious explainable and tested practice.