15th and 16th April - Centre for Child Studies

Presenters:

Matthew Selekman: MSW, Family Therapist and Addictions Counsellor, Co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, Illinois, USA, and recipient of the Walter S Rosenberry Award in 2006, 2000 and 1999.

Jim WIlson: Consultant Family Therapist, Gwent Health Care Trust, Wales and Co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions.

At times in our professional careers, all of us have been faced with clinical situations in which we were intimidated by, or experienced therapeutic paralysis in reaction to, particular clients' provacative and perplexing presenting problems and extensive treatment histories - families that seem to thrive on one crisis to the next.  With these challenging client situations, it can feel like we are trapped in and neutralised by the gravitational pull of a stellar black hole.

In this hands-on practice-oriented workshop we will present several effective ways therapists can tap the full range of their inner resources and creative selves for getting unstuck and being the catalyst for therapeutic change with complex and difficult client practice situations.  Creative uses of therapeutic consultation teams with colleagues with difficult and stuck cases will be discussed.  The workshop will use examples of video tape, live family therapy case consultations, and playful out-of-the-box skill-building exercises, and participants will come away with a plethora of therapeutic tools and strategies, feeling inspired, energized and more confident working outside of their comfort zones with their most challenging clients.  As a result of attending this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Use reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action to keep an open mind, maintain therapeutic manoeuvrability, and co-create possibilities with complex and difficult client situations.
• Identify and utilise specific inner resources and talents to further expand one's therapeutic style and range.
• Bring more humour, drama, and playfulness to one's therapeutic practice
• Tap the inventiveness and imagination powers of our clients to co-construct creative and high quality solutions.
• Use consultation teams with colleagues to co-create workable realities with difficult and stuck treatment situations.
• Creative use of self in collaborative meetings with highly pessimistic and pathology-minded involved helping professionals from larger systems. 

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