WORKSHOPS >>
 
From Family-Helping System Knots to Possibilities:
Co-Constructing Change Through Transformative Dialogue

Clients presenting with severe and chronic difficulties often have experienced multiple treatment failures and may feel quite demoralized and stuck. The network of helping professionals from larger systems that have had extensive involvement with them may also feel quite pessimistic about these clients' being able to or wanting to change. These helpers may cling to certain pathological explanations for the clients' problematic behaviors, have unrealistic treatment expectations for them, or may be stuck engaging in unproductive attempted solution patterns that have inadvertently further exacerbated the clients' difficulties. This can lead to family-helping system knots developing.

Transformative dialogue or creating a safe and respectful collaborative context where all views are honored, can lead to the co-authoring of a new solution-determined story that can liberate the clients as well as the involved helpers from the shackles of the languaged problems that had been pushing all of them around and fueling the family-helping system knot situation. In this practice-oriented workshops, participants will learn how to facilitate transformative dialogues and a variety of other collaborative tools that promote meaningful and productive working relationships with helping professionals from larger systems.