WORKSHOPS >>
 
“Beyond the Yellow-Brick Road”:
The Search for Resourceful Practices and the Development of the Resourceful Practitioner.

Among professionals in health and social care, there can be a tendency to assume that expertise in problem resolution lies outside themselves; residing instead with others who have more knowledge, more wisdom, more charisma or all of these qualities. Yet often these beliefs undermine the “expert“ within us and overshadow our expertise.

This two-day workshop will provide opportunities to explore the creative possibilities open to us in our therapeutic encounters with children and families.

The presenter will illustrate a range of ideas and practice skills to help set the scene for participants' own exploration of their therapeutic potential in helping clients.

This collaborative and resource- based approach recognises expertise in other professionals whilst avoiding the trap of undermining one’s own capacities to help in even the most challenging of predicaments.

The presenters will:

• llustrate the key principles for practice within which improvisational approaches can be developed.
• Illustrate through the use of videotaped examples, case consultations, and discussions on how to incorporate resourceful systemic practice in difficult client situations and with professionals also involved.
• Offer opportunities to practice some or all of a following techniques (depending on participants' areas of interest, main case quandaries and challenges to practice):
• The use of metaphor, personification, symbol, in interviewing children and families to create less problem-focused discussion.
• The use of reflecting teams and processes through the metaphor of theatre. This will include de-centering techniques such as:
  • "therapist as internalised client”
  • reflecting team as “actors of the unsaid themes”
  • playful mind–reading
  • children as consultants to the therapist
  • parents as members of reflecting teams
  • the use of humour, storytelling and other imaginative ways to create possibilities in practice with our clients