12 minutes

Who is present, who is missing

The practical tool: a one-page review of a decision you are working on now, what to do with what it shows you, and what is owed when a process left someone out.

What you’ll be able to do

Complete a presence-and-absence review for a decision you are working on now, and take one action inside your own authority that changes who shapes it.
Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should the unit do with two weeks left?
Draft a presence and absence review for your work, including the decision, in one sentence, who is affected by it, who is actually in the room.

Start with the decision, not the invitation list

Most attempts to check participation start from the wrong end. Staff look at who was invited, notice the list is reasonable, and conclude the process was sound. The list usually is reasonable. The people on it are engaged, informed and willing, which is precisely why their presence is not evidence about who is absent.

Turning the review around fixes this. Write the decision down in one sentence. Then ask who is actually affected by it — not who is a stakeholder in the abstract, but who will experience a different life because of how this goes. Then look at who is in the room. The gap between those two lists is the finding, and it takes about ten minutes to produce.

The gap matters because empty seats do not stay empty. When nobody present has a given experience, the work does not pause to wait for them; a staff member fills the space with a reasonable assumption, and that assumption travels into a finding, a definition or a requirement with no marker on it saying it was a guess. The review's real job is to find those places while they are still labeled as questions.

A presence and absence review

One page you run on a decision that is still changeable. Copy the six rows into your own document and fill them from a project you are working on now. The example below is filled in for a quality review, but the rows work for a policy change, a contract requirement, a communication or a redesign.

The decision, in one sentence We are deciding how quality will be described and measured for a service, and what the agreements will require providers to report. The description we write will shape what counts as good for the next several years.

Who is affected by it People who use the service and people who tried to and stopped. Family members and support people. Direct support workers. Providers of different sizes, including small and culturally specific organizations. Lead agency staff. People who were found ineligible. People who use interpreters or communicate in ways the current process does not accommodate well.

Who is actually in the room Three provider representatives, two family members, one advocacy organization, two county staff, five division staff. Nobody who personally uses the service. No direct support workers. No small or culturally specific provider. Nobody who stopped using the service.

Where staff assumption is standing in for someone The draft finding that people decline the service after initial contact is explained entirely by a staff assumption about motivation. The definition of a successful outcome was written by staff from the agreements rather than from anyone's account of a good result. Both are currently unmarked in the draft and will be read as established.

What it would take to change that, and what it costs Paid time for participants, access support including interpretation, materials in plain language a week ahead, sessions at more than one hour of the day, and a route to people who stopped using the service — most likely through organizations they already trust. Roughly three sessions and a named staff owner. The compensation is a budget question with an identified holder, not a blocker.

One change I will make, and what I will route Inside my authority this week: mark the two staff assumptions plainly as unexamined, and hold three paid conversations before the findings are final. Routed: the standing composition of the advisory group and the participant compensation line, sent to the manager who owns both, with this page attached and a date I will follow up.

Copy the six rows, fill them for one decision that is still changeable, make the change inside your own authority now, send the rest to the people who own it, and put a follow-up date on your own calendar.

Browse and download only. Staff notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Report back, or do not ask again

Come back to the people who took part, not only to the organizations that convened them, and do it whether or not the news is good.
Say what changed because of what they said. Be specific enough that a person can recognize their own contribution in it.
Say what did not change, and why. A clear constraint honestly explained is respected; silence is read as dismissal, and usually correctly.
Say what is still undecided and when they will hear more, then actually send that second message. The follow-up nobody expects is the one that builds something.
Use the format that works for the person, not the one that is easiest to produce. A plain email, a short call, or a page in the language they read all beat a published report nobody told them about.
Credit the work. If people shaped something, name their contribution in the document rather than thanking a general public for its input.

When a process left someone out

What you can change

You control whether an exclusion is named plainly, whether the people affected hear it from you, and whether anything still open is reopened.

What to watch for

Do not treat a quiet fix as repair. Correcting the process for next time, without telling the people the last round excluded, protects the unit's comfort and leaves those people with the same experience they already had.

Your next step

Say what happened and to whom, in plain words and without a defensive frame. Reopen what can still be reopened. Name what cannot, and why. Then change the design, and tell them what you changed.

A presence-and-absence review shows that nobody who uses the service is part of a group shaping a definition, and that one draft finding rests entirely on a staff assumption. The work is due in two weeks. What is the most useful response?

Record the absence as a limitation in the methods section and publish as planned.

Delay the whole product until a full participatory process can be run.

Mark the assumption plainly as unexamined, use the remaining time for a small number of paid conversations with access support, publish with what those people said, and commit in writing to involving them from the question-setting stage next time.

Ask the family members already in the group to speak for people who use the service.

Try a situation

A quality and performance unit has nearly finished a review of how a service is working. The advisory group that shaped the questions has been engaged throughout: three provider representatives, two family members, an advocacy organization and two county staff. Two weeks before the findings are due, a staff member notices that nobody who personally uses the service has been part of the group, and that one of the draft findings — that people “decline the service after initial contact” — has been explained entirely by a staff assumption about why.

What should the unit do with two weeks left?

Note the gap in the methods section as a limitation, publish on time, and plan to include people who use the service in the next review cycle.

Remove the finding about people declining the service, since it cannot be supported without their perspective, and publish the rest on time.

Keep the observation and strip out the explanation, marking it plainly as not yet understood. Use the two weeks to talk with a small number of people who use the service and are paid for their time, with access support arranged. Publish with what they said, and commit in writing to bringing them into the next review from the question-setting stage.

Carry this forward

Start from the decision, not from the invitation list. Ask who is affected by this, then ask who is in the room, and the gap becomes visible immediately.
Staff assumption is the substitute that fills every empty seat. When nobody with a given experience is present, the work does not pause; someone guesses, and the guess enters the record as a finding.
Reporting back is not a courtesy at the end. It is the part that makes the next invitation answerable, and it takes about an hour.
When a process has excluded people, repair is more than fixing the process going forward. It means saying plainly what happened, to the people it happened to, and reopening what can still be reopened.

A scenario about a review that surfaces an absence late in a project, a completed presence-and-absence review you can copy, and a knowledge check on what to do with what the review shows.

Run the review on one decision that is still changeable, make the one change inside your own authority this week, and send the rest of the review to the people who own the parts you do not.

Your next step

Take one decision you are working on now and run the review on it before it is settled.

Write the decision in one sentence, then list who is affected by it and who is currently in the room

Find the place where staff assumption is currently standing in for someone's actual experience, and mark it

Name the one change inside your own authority and the one you need to route to somebody else

Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Mark this lesson complete

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.