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Tapping Client Inventiveness and Expertise:
Innovations in Child and Adolescent-Focused Collaborative Systemic Therapy

Presented by:
Matthew Selekman -
Partners for Collaborative Solutions
Evanston, IL

Jim Wilson
Partners for Collaborative Solutions; Centre for
Child-Focused Therapy, Institute of Family Therapy
London & Cardiff, Wales, UK

Doing the outrageous, telling jokes and stories, stretching our clients' imagination powers and living outside the comfort zone of therapy model rules and formulas, can be the catalyst for loosening up fixed client beliefs and disrupting unproductive family and larger systems interactions. Too often than not, therapists and involved helping professionals from larger systems fall into the trap of "one-size-fits-all" thinking in how they approach their clients' problem situations. With today's more challenging child and adolescent case situations, therapeutic flexibility and thinking and living "outside-the-box" with their clients, is a must!

In this "hands-on" and upbeat practice-oriented training institute, we will present several creative ways therapists can use themselves' in the therapeutic process and involve their clients in playful and effective in and out-of-session experiments that help create a therapeutic climate ripe for change. Reflective theater, creative uses of client time traveling, family play and art therapy strategies, are just a few of the therapeutic experiments participants will learn that effectively tap client inventiveness and expertise to create possibilities. Creative uses of therapeutic consultation teams will be discussed. In addition, we will present several effective ways therapists can facilitate solution-determined transformative dialogues with involved helping professionals from larger systems. Finally, we will demonstrate through videotape examples, skill-building exercises, and daily case consultations the application of these ideas with children and adolescents experiencing chronic and severe behavioral difficulties.