Written by Amanda Tailleur-Marshall, BSW, RSW
I never imagined myself working in employment as a social worker – it didn’t feel like a natural fit. And yet here I am, just over a year into this work with LEAD (Linking Employment Abilities and Development).
When I first started as a Youth Employment Counsellor (YEC) at the Inglewood Opportunity Hub (IOH), our waitlist was three months long, and only grew longer every day, eventually topping at a six-month wait for clients seeking employment support. Caseloads were unmanageable –often exceeding 30 clients – and young people were struggling to access support when they needed it most. This meant that by the time a YEC was able to connect with a prospective client, they were likely to have already moved on. The reality is that the youth we serve require timely, responsive services.
What I noticed was a tension I couldn’t ignore: we were spending our first meetings gathering information and preparing for future support, while young people were arriving ready for help at that moment. And that “future support” could be months away. Needless to say, something had to give to, whether it was burnout amongst me and my teammates, or a lack of faith in the employment services of the IOH. Neither outcome was wanted, and I was determined to find another solution.
I had the immense privilege of attending Eastside Community Mental Health’s training on the Single Session Mindset with Dan Neuls and Nancy McElheran, based on their work with Dr. Arnie Slive. Over the course of that two-day training session, my thinking began to shift. I started to see how Single Session Mindset as a modality that could extend beyond clinical settings and into Youth Employment Counselling.
Single Session Therapy, originally developed and advanced by clinicians like Slive and colleagues, is grounded in the idea that each session should be treated as if it may be the only one and therefore should offer something meaningful and complete in and of itself. Rather than assuming ongoing work, it centers immediacy, client readiness, and practical change (Slive & Bobele, 2011).
This got me thinking: How could LEAD YECs adopt this mindset? What would Single Session Employment Support look like? How could I move from reacting to a waitlist to responding to the immediate needs of the young person in front of me? And could we offer the same radical hospitality that defines the IOH while still making a single session meaningful?
Thanks to Wood’s Homes, I was able to attend this training and what emerged was the realization that we had unintentionally created barriers for our young people. My supervisor and teammates trusted me to take initiative and develop something meaningful. I could have simply attended the training and returned to business as usual, but the Single Session Mindset challenges you to reconsider your patterns, adjust your practice, and make changes that genuinely benefit clients.
What I’ve come to understand is that this approach aligns with a broader shift happening across helping professions. Research shows that many people only attend one session of support, whether by choice or circumstance, which makes it critical that the first interaction offers something concrete and useful (Schleider & Weitz, 2017).
As frontline staff, what we bring is insight, adaptability, and the willingness to try something new, even when success isn’t guaranteed. Adapting my caseload and implementing Single Session Employment Support hasn’t been easy, but the changes have been remarkable. My colleagues and I now carry caseloads under 20 individuals, the waitlist is gone, and the young people we serve are getting support when they’re most motivated to receive it.
We may only walk alongside a young person for a single day but a single conversation, when it is intentional and focused, can still offer meaningful support. That impact feels like magic.
References
Slive, A., & Bobele, M. (2011). When one hour is all you have: Effective therapy for walk-in clients. Phoenix Publishing House.
Schleider, J. L., & Weisz, J. R. (2017). Little treatments, promising effects? Meta-analysis of single-session interventions for youth psychiatric problems. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(2), 107–115.
