Building Trust with Families in Crisis

When a family in crisis sits down with an advocate, the first thing they need is not a checklist—it’s connection. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is powerful because it starts there. It is less a technique than a posture: a deliberate choice to meet people with empathy, invite their voice into the room, and honor the truth that lasting change is most durable when it is self-chosen.

Heather Edwards, Director of Community Success for Restore Hope and MI Trainer, reminds practitioners, “We are playing the long game with these families.” Relationship building takes time, but it also builds safety, restores agency, and kindles hope.

MI is an evidence-based, collaborative, person-centered approach that enhances motivation through respectful dialogue, allowing people to discover their own reasons for change. Rooted in the recovery space and now applied across sectors, its emotional impact is felt immediately.

Edwards has seen in her personal work with Restore Hope and the 100 Families Initiative that when participants experience genuine listening—without judgment or pressure—the room changes. Shoulders drop. Stories lengthen. Possibilities emerge. Instead of being told what to do, families become partners in the work, and partnership changes the emotional temperature of the process from compliance to ownership.

Edwards frames MI around everyday practices that sound simple but carry profound weight. Open-ended questions signal curiosity rather than control. Reflective listening validates experiences and values; it communicates, “I heard you,” and then gently offers back what was said so the participant can hear it, too.

As Edwards puts it, “What you’re trying to do is pull more out of the participant that you’re talking with.” It is an invitation to articulate hopes, strengths, and next steps that does more than just gather information. It builds belief. People begin to hear themselves want something better, and that can be the spark that carries a family from surviving to steadily rebuilding.

The core principles of MI—expressing empathy, supporting self-efficacy, developing discrepancy, and rolling with resistance—are all relationship moves. Empathy communicates dignity. Supporting self-efficacy reminds participants that they have strengths and a history of small wins to build on. Developing discrepancy is not about pointing out contradictions; it’s about helping someone see the gap between where life is now and what they most value, then choosing steps that align with those values. Rolling with resistance resists the urge to argue or prescribe; it honors that the person is the expert on their own situation and that ambivalence is natural when change is costly.

These relational moves also protect practitioners. Taking on a participant’s struggles as one’s own can lead to fatigue and burnout. MI offers a different stance: walk with, don’t carry. When advocates hold the process and the relationship—rather than the entire outcome—they remain present, grounded, and effective over the long term. The work becomes sustainable because the weight is shared. Participants keep returning not because they are being managed, but because they feel understood and accompanied.

Edwards believes that MI is a crucial strategy for service providers to ensure that participants feel seen and capable—a shift that often precedes any measurable change in circumstance. Motivational Interviewing does not promise quick fixes. It offers something sturdier: a relationship that catalyzes change by elevating the participant’s voice and values. It asks advocates to trust the process, to listen for what a person is already reaching toward, and to align support around that reach. The result is not just better plans; it is better experiences of help—experiences that participants come back to, and that, over time, change lives.