BTNE STUDY DAY FRIDAY 4 MAY 2012

1. Staying Solution Focused: Andrew Callcott and Yvonne Greaves

A back to basics workshop for those who are finding that 'simple' does not always mean 'easy'. With stories, exercises and demonstration, we will attempt to help those who are familiar with the Solution Focussed approach to stay on track.

Andrew Callcott, works as a psychological therapist for the NHS in Northumberland. He has been a solution focused enthusiast since gate-crashing a Michael Durrant workshop in 1993 and is a graduate of Birmingham University’s Solution Focused Brief Therapy M.A. course. He is currently chair of the United Kingdom Association for Solution Focused Practice.

Yvonne Greaves works as team lead and primary mental health worker within the Emotional Well Being Team for South Tyneside Foundation Trust, Gateshead locality. Her professional background derives from social work (Dipsw) and mental health practice development (Bsc hons). Yvonne’s interest in Solution Focused Brief Therapy derives from completing her Diploma in Social Work during 1999. Since seeking placement within a CAMHS setting where she was able to further develop knowledge skill and experience she has over the years been fortunate enough to continue to use Solution Focused thinking and techniques throughout various working roles and within clinical practice, facilitate training, attend European Brief Therapy Association conferences, is a member of United Kingdom Association for Solution Focused Practice and Brief Therapy North East.

2. Using Solutions Focus to help employees cope with uncertainty and change: Antoinette Oglethorpe

The current economic downturn has been deeper and longer than many expected, affecting all organisations whatever their industry or sector. Many employees (and employers) have not been here before and are uncertain about what the future holds. Solutions Focus is an excellent tool to help employees retain perspective and focus on aspects of their lives that they can actually do something about. Antoinette Oglethorpe will run an experiential workshop that promotes positive coping strategies in others. It will also draw upon the considerable experience of BTNE members, to consider what helps people during times of uncertainty and change; and how we, as managers and team leaders, can add most value during these difficult times.

Antoinette Oglethorpe is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD who specializes in helping companies retain their best people and develop them to be the leaders of the future through a combination of consultancy, coaching and training. Her expertise spans training, management, leadership and career development coupled with generalist HR and board-level experience across a range of industry sectors.

Before joining the sfwork team she was Learning and Development Director for XL Capital, and worked leading the provision and development of Learning Coaches across Europe for Accenture. Antoinette is an experienced coach and is developing SF approaches to career coaching and conflict management. She has experience of working with a number of different organisation structures and cultures including start-ups, global organisations and matrix structures.

3. Narrative resilience for today's practitioners: Liz Todd and Charmian Hobbs

This session uses narrative therapy as a community conversation to support practitioners working in challenging circumstances. These challenges may be the nature of the work, organizational change, or the uncertainties of the economic situation in services and charities. We will use narrative ideas to provide support in dealing with these challenges to our sense of purpose and lifestyles. We will be using a concept of resilience that is about making concerns, hopes, resources, and knowledges visible and available to those attending.

Both Liz Todd and Charmian Hobbs are Chartered educational psychologists. Liz Todd works at Newcastle University as Prof or Educational Inclusion. Charmian Hobbs was Principal Educational Psychologist in Darlington and now centres her work in narrative therapy through 'Talking for Change'

4. Expand your creativity: Matthew Selman

Service users often respond in ways that take us by surprise requiring us to think on our feet and out of our box. Drawing on his parallel life in improvisational theatre Matt will help us extend our ability to improvise in our work and help us to go with the client whatever comes up.

Matt Selman currently works as a principal clinical psychologist in NTW NHS Foundation Trust. He works with people with learning disabilities experiencing mental health problems. He is in his final year of training in the Master’s course in family therapy and systemic practice at Northumbria University.

For 7 years prior to working in the NHS Matt was a full time professional entertainer doing juggling street shows in London’s Covent Garden and travelling around the world. During this time he took some classes in improvisation and used them to enhance his ability to work with audiences. This interest in improvisation never went away and he has trained with leading improvisation teachers around the world. He currently teaches improv classes in Newcastle and performs improv with the group ‘On the Spot’ and over the last year as part of the a double act ‘Matt and Ian’ including an overall 5 star review from LoveFringe.

5. The Solution Focused Team Leader: Steve Blades

This workshop will be led by Steve Blades who is a GP and coach with extensive experience of supporting team and leadership development using solution focused methods.

Within the workshop we will explore how the principles of solution focused working apply to team leaders. We will then look in more detail at the role of the key SF skill of affirming and participants will have the opportunity to practice this skill.

The workshop will be suitable for all who work in teams.

6. Using your Very Sexy Brain and Neurology To Frame Positive Client Centred Change: Nigel Hetherington

Brain Neurology is pretty simple and we can use this to establish serious credibility and pave the way for very positive change. By describing basic brain functionality we can demonstrate how clients can make changes real and engender positive expectations. Framing, or storytelling to set up unconscious client expectations via therapeutic interventions is about transmitting positive outcomes BEFORE you do any real change work. This is almost always true. By storytelling or therapeutic metaphor we are setting up positive frames or unconscious expectation sets that our clients can utilise to create and start their own change even before we do an 'official' change process.

One of the World Class change professionals I have had the real experience of working with is Bill O Hanlon. Bill was kind enough, in a seminar to show that statistically, regardless of technique, one of the two most powerful components of client change is that your client feels and knows about positive therapeutic relationships and that YOU believe your client can change. This is fundamentally about creating rapport and credibility. You can do both as in create rapport and credibility by sharing your knowledge about the brain and how the brain processes learning and is fundamentally plastic, that is can change.

Join me in a one hour seminar that describes how your brain plastically works to engender the changes clients want, regardless of your professional change mechanism; Be it NLP, Hypnotherapy, Solution Focused ( which are my preferences ), CBT, or even
Crystal Healing ( did I just say this? ) Yes indeed, expand your repertoire and create an even more credible base for your good work.

During a six year career in software design and development for the offshore and medical industry, Nigel was introduced to NLP and Hypnotherapy and never, too often looked back. He left a reasonably well paid yet ultimately unrewarding job and sold his home to start his training and facilitation company Communicating Excellence in 2005.

Nigel works as a training facilitator and clinical therapist. His areas of interest are serious trauma, addictions and integrating spirituality within an integral framework of the principles of therapeutic remedial assistance and generative change. He is the creator of Clean Therapy, which is a process mix of NLP, hypnosis, humour, some other stuff and body work. Certified Training: NLP Trainer with SNLP, John Grinder and The Professional Guild of NLP. Clinical Hypnotherapy Trainer with SNLP and General Hypnotherapy Standards Council

7. What works in crisis: Julie Taylor and Katie

We will co-facilitate a hosted conversation with a small audience regarding 'what works in crisis'. Our idea is to allow people an opportunity to submit a range of SF questions which we will tackle in freeform style in room with everyone. The questions will be collected earlier in the day and saved in a 'hat' until our slot is due.

That way everyone can ask something that they are curious about, it is more equitable, more spontaneous for us, and hopefully will have an element of fun too.

Julie previously provided a Solution Focused response to Katie when she was going through a time of crisis. Numbers limited

8. Dropping stones in muddied waters: Maggie Downs

This workshop will look at ways of making a difference in the lives of children and young people who have experienced violence and abuse. The workshop will include the ideas that inspire my work, an activity to try out and an opportunity to ask questions.

I am a counsellor for children and young people. I have been working as an individual counsellor in the area of domestic violence and sexual abuse for eleven years. I also have fifteen years’ experience working with children and families. I have worked for Social Services, Barnardo’s and Sure Start.

I hold a Diploma in Counselling, a Diploma in Child Development / attachment at degree level. I have trained in Solution Focussed Therapy, Theraplay Principles and Play Therapy. I am also a certified Group Therapist. From this wide range of disciplines and therapies, I have developed a variety of techniques which enable me to offer a collaborative approach with it’s heart in play therapy and a belief in children and young people and their wonderful ability to find possibilities and solutions to grow, change and heal from their trauma’s and frightening experiences.

I am a guest in their world in which I join them as I crawl around the floor with them, witness and join their fantasy world, listen and believe their stories, encourage their solutions by my curiosity and as any respectful guest, I try not to outstay my welcome. And as Carl Lung said:

“Learn your theories as well as you can, then put them aside when you touch the living musical of the human soul. In other words, remember who is the expert.”

9. Four Ridiculously Simple Ways To Feel Better: Andy Hunt

In this hour long mini-workshop Andy Hunt will introduce four straightforward ways in which you can move away from unhelpful thoughts and states of mind into something more useful.

Notice Five Things

Starting with a very simple exercise to get of the mental rush hour and back to a simple presence in the moment. Remember the present moment is what you are in when you are not worrying.

Un-Thinking The Worst

Negative, judgemental and self-critical thoughts are very common, very sticky and very unhelpful. They can be like velcro. Getting away from them can be a real challenge.

This section is all about distancing yourself from that poisonous chorus with Karaoke Thinking.

Sitting In the Happy Chair

Trying to talk or affirm yourself into a better mood can be very tiring. Some moods can be very difficult to get out of.

This simple technique from an Indian NLP Practitioner with an improbable name can help you shift your mood using whatever is in your environment.

What’s The Question?

Where we put our attention has a profound effect on how we feel and what we do.

Dwell on the bad and things will tend to get worse, dwell on the good and things will tend to get better.

Unfortunately attention can have a mind of it’s own. Fortunately there is a really simple way to put your attention on what’s important to you.

This final section shows you how to get the most from the power of the question mark.

Andy Hunt is an EFT & NLP Trainer and Practitioner living in the North East of England. He works with people who give themselves a hard time, judge themselves harshly, feel bad about themselves and spend far more time beating themselves up than living the life they would want.

Since leaving university30 years ago, he has had a variety of jobs including: milkman, assistant steward on an Irish Sea ferry, Residential Social Worker at a centre for delinquent teenagers, Assistant Head of Youth Centre in Brixham, grape picker in Switzerland, spring grinder(!) in Germany, night porter, barman, software engineer, and now therapist and trainer.

10. When there’s a cure I will feel free…..Claire Hughes-Dent

Claire works with people with HIV, before this she worked with people with long term physical health conditions. In this workshop she looks at working with people who feel they have a limited or no or future and how Solution Focused Brief Therapy can help people to unlock their futures, no matter how short. She will also look at working with people whose future is dependent on a change in ‘outside’ circumstances. Claire’s best hopes for this session are fun, learning and a sharing of experiences!

11. Problem to Solution using ‘PME’ - a Positive, Mindful, Enlightened approach to Therapy: Janine Ross

Buddha suggested (even before de Shazer and Kim Berg)!! - that all our problems arise from confused and negative states of mind, and that all our happiness and good fortune arise from peaceful and positive states of mind., Through mindfulness, clients can recognize that holding onto some of these feelings are ineffective and destructive. Sound solution focused to you??

This workshop will look at how these approaches can influence our work, not only directly with clients and how we approach them, but also how it influences us as Therapists

Janine has been practising SFBT for nearly 20 years. Her background is as a Clinical Nurse Specialist working with children, adolescents and substance misusers, and latterly in adult mental Health as a Psychotherapist in the IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapy) service in Cumbria.

She has been involved in EBTA for almost as many years as she has been doing SFBT and is currently President of the Association, she has also been a member and organiser/editor with BTNE for many years and also the UKASFP (including conference organiser in the early days).

Over the years she has presented in the UK, Europe and Canada

12. Solution focused approaches with people who are suicidal or have self harmed: Andrew Callcott

This workshop will give an overview into how solution focused practice can be integrated into working safely with people who are expressing suicidal thoughts or intentions, and with people who have recently harmed themselves - whatever their intent.
An interactrive workshop with description, demonstration and practice will be what participants can expect.

Brief Therapy North East Contacts: