Workshops – Thu, May 6

Pre-Conference

All Day Workshops

 

1) Cheryl White & David Denborough (Australia)
Collective Narrative Practice: Receiving and responding to stories of trauma and social suffering

This workshop is relevant to people working with individuals, groups and communities experiencing hardship, trauma and/or social suffering of diverse forms. By taking narrative therapy principles and practices developed by Michael White & David Epston as the starting point, cross-cultural partnerships are explored through a diverse range of collective narrative methodologies. Workshop participants join the collaborative endeavour and generate diverse forms of collective narrative practices that are culturally respectful, resonant and effective. Cheryl and David’s recent teaching/community assignments on behalf of Dulwich Centre Foundation have included Kuwait (to Iraqi workers who are establishing a trauma centre in Basra), Israel, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Canada, USA, Uganda, Rwanda and a range of Aboriginal Australian communities.

Cheryl White is a founder and director of the Dulwich Centre and the International Journal of Narraritve Therapy and Community Work in Adelaide, Australia.
David Denborough is the author of Collective narrative practice: Responding to individuals, groups and communities who have experienced trauma and editor of Trauma: Narrative responses to traumatic experience.

 

2) Stephen Madigan PhD (Canada):
Narrative Therapy Through Time

Join Stephen as he takes you through a close up microanalysis of 6 narrative therapy sessions conducted over 6 weeks with Dan. Dan had been struggling with anxiety so much so that it kept him house bound for 2 years and had not allowed him to work for over 10 years.

Within Stephen’s dialogue with Dan, the workshop carefully explains narrative therapy theory/practice ideas on

1) Identity,
2) Relational externalizing,
3) Anti-individualizing practice,
4) Relative influence and counter-viewing questions,
5) Re-membering conversations, and
6) Practices of the written word.

Workshop Handouts

Stephen Madigan is an award winning family therapist who’s book entitled “Who has the Story-Telling Rights to the Story Being Told: Narrative Therapy Theory and Practice”, has recently been published by the APA (along with a six-part DVD series of his live narrative therapy work).
 
Stephen opened the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy as the first narrative therapy training clinic in the northern hemisphere (in Vancouver, Canada). He teaches narrative therapy workshops worldwide.
 
To contact Stephen please got to www.stephenmadigan.ca

 

3) Lorraine Hedtke PhD and John Winslade PhD (USA):
Re-membering Lives

The workshop asks the intriguing question: If death doesn’t mean saying goodbye, how are we freed to grieve differently? Lorraine and John show how to develop relational narratives that live on after a physical death. The workshop outlines how narrative conversations about death and grief are less about the passive suffering of loss and more about growing invigorating identity stories amid the ongoing transitions that death occasions.

Lorraine Hedtke and John Winslade are the co-authors of the book “Remembering lives: conversations with the dying and the bereaved.”  They teach workshops on this topic in many countries around the world.

 

4) Alan Jenkins MSW (Australia):
Becoming Ethical: Holding a relationship focus in work with men who have engaged in violence and abusive behaviour.

This workshop will explore the ethical concept of reaching towards the world of the other, in work with men who have engaged in abusive relationship practices. The central motif holds a passionate interest in otherness as the antithesis of violence. The workshop will focus on interest in otherness both in the counseling relationship and in relationships of significance for the man and his community.

The workshop will also illustrate possibilities for moving beyond reactive investments in relationship paradigms which are based on cultural and moral imperatives for desire, love and forgiveness that demand conformity and suppress difference. Highlighted is the production of ethical windows or moments of ethical realization and expression which promote an openness to otherness, respect of difference and generous forms of love. An emphasis will be placed on developing processes of careful preparation which enable readiness for participation in safe, respectful and novel conversations with family and community members.

Alan Jenkins has worked in a range of multi-undisciplinary teams addressing violence and abusive behaviour for 25 years. Rather than tire from this work, he has become increasingly intrigued with possibilities for the discovery of ethical and respectful ways of relating. Alan’s most recent publication is “Becoming Ethical: A Parallel Political Journey With Men Who Have Abused”, published in 2009. He is currently a director of Nada, an independent service that provides intervention in family abuse, violence and workplace harassment. He manages the Mary St. Program for young people who have sexually assaulted, along with their caregivers and members of their communities.

 

5) William Madsen PhD (USA): Collaborative Helping:
A practice framework for family-centered services

Mental Health services are undergoing profound changes and agencies are searching for effective models to develop strength-based, culturally responsive, empowering partnerships with families. This workshop offers a flexible map to operationalize these family-centered principles within the everyday “messiness” of practice. The workshop draws on Appreciative Inquiry, Motivational Interviewing, Solution-Focused and Narrative Therapy practice as well as a Signs of Safety approach to child protection work, and extensive interviews with “natural helpers”.

The workshop highlights a five-step practice framework to help families envision desired lives, address long-standing problems, and develop proactive coping strategies in the context of their local communities. The workshop will help participants develop sustainable practices to ground their work in a spirit of possibilities, collaboration and accountability.

William Madsen is the founder of the Family-Centered Services Project. He provides international training and consultation regarding collaborative approaches to helping and the development of institutional structures and organizational cultures that support family-centered work. Bill has written numerous articles and is the author of “Collaborative Therapy with Multi-Stressed Families” (2nd Edition). He is currently working on a second book entitled, “Helping: Towards More Supportive Services”, which is an effort to highlight a practice framework for family support workers, case managers and milieu workers.