2019: Issue 4 Archives - The Dulwich Centre

Matters of care-taking — David Denborough

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:41:35 +0000

This is an extract from: Dulwich Centre and Department of Social Work. (2019). Handbook Master of Narrative Therapy
and Community Work. (pp. 20–23). Melbourne, Australia: The University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.

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Trauma-informed teaching in a narrative practice training context — Kristina Lainson

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:18:17 +0000

Trigger or content warnings have become a common feature in higher education settings. Alongside their increasing use in the lecture theatre or classroom, a potentially divisive debate has arisen. Proponents for the use of trigger warnings view this practice as part of appropriate care-taking of students, making connections with trauma-informed practice. Others argue their increased use evidences a rise in problematic paternalistic attitudes that limit opportunities for rigorous and engaged learning. This debate becomes particularly meaningful where students are part of training programs that ultimately provide them with entry into professions that will expose them to difficult contexts, creating an imperative to prepare them for the work they may be doing. This article discusses the implications of this debate for narratively informed training contexts. By drawing on narrative ideas it outlines opportunities for attending to both sides of this debate, highlighting shared concerns and establishing a range of practices that offer practical solutions to address this complex dilemma.

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Being both narrative practitioner and academic researcher: A reflection on what thematic analysis has to offer narratively informed research — Kristina Lainson, Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:15:58 +0000

What opportunities are there for narrative practitioners to engage in academic research whilst retaining an alignment with poststructuralist ideas, feminist
commitments and narrative practice principles? This paper considers Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s model of thematic analysis (TA) as an approach which can overcome some of the tensions that arise when integrating both narrative practitioner and researcher stance. Drawing on one practitioner-researcher’s experience of navigating some of these dilemmas and incorporating a rich discussion of some of the heritages, understandings and intentions that underpin TA and its development, this paper seeks to assist, inform and encourage narrative practitioners who are reaching for approaches that offer a good fit for their research hopes and aims.

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Solidarity and friendship — Claver Haragirimana

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:12:50 +0000

Claver Haragirimana is the co-founder of OPROMAMER, an association to promote solidarity among people with mental illness in Rwanda. OPROMAMER is working to transform understandings about mental health and to reduce the significant burden of stigma faced by mental health patients
and ex-patients in Rwanda. Founded by former patients of a psychiatric hospital with which it is now affiliated, OPROMAMER has grown from a single person’s vision to become a nationwide organisation with twenty independent groups and 1000 members. In addition to advocacy work, Claver’s organisation runs a savings club that has supported the development of small economic projects and enabled members to access loans to pay for school fees or healthcare. This interview of Claver Haragirimana was conducted by David Denborough.

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Supporting genocide survivors and honouring Rwandan healing ways: Our own names, our own prescriptions — Chaste Uwihoreye

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:04:52 +0000

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda took place over 100 days. Each year, there is therefore a 100-day commemoration period during which Chaste Uwihoreye is involved in supporting survivors. In this interview, Chaste spoke with David Denborough.

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Narrative tools in social work supervision: The supervisor life certificate and supervisee’s journey tools — Mohamed Fareez

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:57:13 +0000

This paper discusses the use of two tools in the supervision of social workers: the supervisor life certificate and the supervisee’s journey template. These have been used to help thicken the preferred stories of social workers in a social service organisation in Singapore. Social workers are often expected to acquire a robust repertoire of skills and theories to help them manage and support the people who consult them, and social work supervisors might adopt an ‘expert’ position from which to impart these skills through Socratic questioning and coaching. A narrative perspective acknowledges that social workers who enter the profession already have skills and knowledges that they can access to support their work. The supervisee’s journey template allows for these skills to be documented and thickened through scaffolding questions. The supervisor life certificate is a tool to help social workers reflect on the values that they bring to their supervisory roles.

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Stories from the train station: Or what can you do when you don’t know when the train is coming, whether the train is coming, or where it goes — Yiannis Kafkas

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:54:45 +0000

This work has to do with a meeting in a train station when you don’t know when the train is coming, whether the train is coming, or where it goes. In other words,it is a story about the struggle of a teenage boy from Syria to gain authorship over the stories of his life. And about how to keep your dreams alive in times of great adversity.

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Narrative practice and Intentional Peer Support — Hamilton Kennedy and Shery Mead

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:51:46 +0000

Hamilton and Shery Mead spoke with each other over the course of 2019. They had been united through their connection to intentional peer support (IPS), of
which Shery is the founder and Hamilton a practitioner. Narrative therapy and IPS have both proposed meaningful alternatives to clinical ways of work with people. More recently, Hamilton has attempted to use both of these skills together. You can read about this more in the accompanying article, ‘Narrative practice and peer support’ (Kennedy, 2019).

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Narrative practice and peer support — Hamilton Kennedy

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:48:43 +0000

In 2018, Hamilton was working in a youth psychiatric hospital as a peer-support worker and studying narrative therapy. Having initially trained in intentional peer support (IPS), Hamilton began to incorporate narrative ideas into their work. This paper offers an exploration and some stories of this process. It recounts the strengths and challenges of combining a peer approach with narrative practice. Combining narrative practice with a peer approach provided new opportunities for resisting totalising narratives of ‘illness’, working towards achieving meaningful lives, and reconnecting with people and relationships.

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Adding letters to telephone counselling: A narrative response to frequent callers — Daniela Schon

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:45:23 +0000

This paper demonstrates how therapeutic letter writing and other narrative practices were implemented in a phone-based community counselling service
in relation to work with regular and frequent callers. Helplines provide support for people in distress. Although the focus of these services is often on times of crisis when lives may be at stake, many callers to helplines are struggling with ongoing mental health issues, and may phone frequently, sometimes several times a day, over long periods. This can stretch helpline resources, preventing urgent calls from getting through and taxing counsellors who may be peer-support workers or volunteers. Lifeline Aotearoa’s attempts to manage frequent callers raised questions about the services the organisation was offering and whether it was contributing to ‘maintaining’ those frequent callers. Narrative ideas were introduced to facilitate conversations that offered rich story development, for both callers and counsellors, and to situate problems callers presented in a wider social context in which they might make a contribution.

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Gender Group at Peak House: Making space beyond inclusion, resisting cis- and Heteronormativity A response – Kelsi Semeschuk

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:42:00 +0000

In the article ‘Gender Group at Peak House: Making space beyond inclusion, resisting cis- and heteronormativity’ by Bhupie Dulay, Graeme Sampson,
Stefanie Krasnow and Vikki Reynolds (2019, in this issue) there are a multitude of concepts, ideas and practices that I found thrilling and capturing of my attention. Here, I will focus on one excerpt that I found especially relevant to my practice context. The explorations of the youth at Peak House, and those of Dulay and colleagues, in relation to ‘the interrelationships of substance misuse, gender and sexuality, systemic oppression and resistance’ were so richly described that I felt the need to hone in on particular aspects that linked to my context. I thought that I could most skilfully act as a witness1 to the stories told in this article from the viewpoint of my therapeutic practice, with access to the insider knowledges of the people consulting me.

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Companion piece — Angel Yuen

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:37:48 +0000

Angel Yuen is a narrative practitioner from Canada who provides counselling and consultation in the Greater Toronto Area. Part of her previous work for two decades was as a school social worker with young people in urban schools. She also is a teacher at the Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto www.narrativetherapycentre.com, and a member of the international faculty of Dulwich Centre. Angel can be contacted at: contact@narrativetherapycentre.com

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Gender Group at Peak House: Making space beyond inclusion, resisting cis- and heteronormativity — Bhupie Dulay, Graeme Sampson, Stefanie Krasnow and Vikki Reynolds

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:28:53 +0000

Gender Group is an ever-evolving therapeutic group at Peak House. Peak House is a live-in program for 13 to 18-year-olds of all genders who are
struggling with problematic substance use, exploitation and oppression in their lives. This article explores Gender Group’s historical and current attempts to make space while resisting sexualised and gendered violence, cisnormativity and heteronormativity. Particular ethics structure the practice of Gender Group. These include: contextualising problems, enacting accountability, attending to language, resisting the binary while acknowledging the impact of the binary and recognising youth as changemakers in communities. The authors examine how practitioners co-construct safety with youth by holding structure and fluidity/flexibility in tension, and through the therapists decentring themselves and demasking professionalism. All of these practices create space for outcomes that cannot be measured, such as the therapeutic value for young people’s lives, the reduction of harm, the amplification of youth wisdom, solidarity through lateral mentoring and the transformation of communities by young people.

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Passion, desire, fun and justice: Ideas and stories from the editorial team of Balaknama, a newspaper for and by street and working children — Sanno, Shambhu, Deepak, Jyoti and Kishan

admin@dulwichcentre.com.au — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 04:24:11 +0000

Narrative practitioners interviewed editors and reporters from Balaknama, a newspaper that is determined to honour the stories and experiences of street
and working children. The Balaknama team shared their passion for bringing to light the strengths and skills of street children, and their hopes and dreams, in addition to reporting stories of the hardships faced by young people living on the streets. The team also shared some of the practices they have developed to sustain their work, to build rapport with other street children, to invite previously untold stories, and to protect the safety of reporters and those whose stories they tell, which sometimes extends to working with a whole family. The editor of Balaknama can be contacted at balaknamaeditor@gmail.com.

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