Kia tutuki ai ngā whainga me ngā tumanako kia mau tonu i ngā mahi
Through working together our goals and objectives will be achieved
Join here
Kia tutuki ai ngā whainga me ngā tumanako kia mau tonu i ngā mahi
Through working together our goals and objectives will be achieved
Join here
An experiential workshop for anyone who works with family or whānau in Aotearoa NZ.
Led by Dr. Craig Whisker
Clinical Family Therapist & Accredited Supervisor, Australian Assn of Family Therapy Registered Psychotherapist (PBANZ), Registered Social Worker(SWRB)
Experiential Learning to Expand Your Ability to Work Effectively with Families and Whānau
The purpose of this Family Therapy Intensive is to assist anyone who works or wants to work with family or whānau to expand their abilities to work humanely, holistically, and with skill in the task of creating effective relations with a wide range of people who are experiencing issues of concern to them. You are invited to bring your unique goals and aspirations to the Intensive, to make these known, and to actively engage in creative processes that aim to promote open, experiential learning for you and your fellow participants.|
Dates and times
The Intensive runs from 9.00am to 4.30pm daily from Monday, 17 April, to Friday, 21 April 2023, with four 1.5 sessions per day interspersed with morning tea, lunchtime, and afternoon tea breaks.
Your Investment: $1,250.00 (incl. GST)
Training to work with families or whānau is a personal process for the worker
One of the complexities of working with families or whānau is that the work can trigger “personal stuff” about the workers’ own family or whānau. Therefore, training for family or whānau workers must be willing to engage with trainee’s personal issues — to the extent that trainees consent — to refine or resolve those matters that might otherwise adversely affect the families or whānau being worked with. In other words, training to work with family or whānau is always, to some extent, a personally confronting and potentially transformative process for each trainee.
For these reasons, the Intensive is an experiential learning process where participants are invited to reflect on the influence of their families of origin, other significant relations, and associated cultural values, and to make assessments of the effects of these influences on their functioning during the Intensive, and to experiment in making refinements to their functioning in the here and now situations where they arise. The aim is to build up participants’ abilities to be present with the realities of the families or whānau with whom they are working, not their own.
Over the five days of the Intensive, we will be guided by the following processes and concepts:
Whakawhanaungatanga: Establishing connections and purposes for being together
Exploring and promoting dialogue about who you are and what has brought you to the Intensive, setting realistic developmental goals for the future, and making collaborative plans with the whole group for their fulfilment in whole or part.
Systemic perspectives on family, whānau, and society
Opening our eyes to families and whānau as complex relational groups in a socially constructed world. Utilising relational sculpture to explore key systemic concepts, namely, circularity, connectedness, constraints, cultural context, and curiosity, and the intersections between the social world of a client family or whānau and the social world of the family or whānau worker, plus the implications for both.
Preparations for, and conducting of, the first five minutes of a family or whānau session
Early in the Intensive, we explore the preparations participants routinely undergo in readiness to lead a family or whānau session, and later, participants are invited to conduct the first five minutes or so of such a session with a view to making self-evaluations and receiving feedback from other participants that may assist them to identify possible areas for subsequent refinement through role training.
Role training for the specific refinement of functioning
One of the main methods utilised during the Intensive to increase the effectiveness of our functioning as family or whānau workers is the psychodramatic activity of role training. A role describes the form of our functioning, for example, creative guide, attuned listener, immobilised rabbit-in-headlights, etc. Role training typically begins with the enactment of a relevant situation followed by a role analysis and planning for role development that might either consolidate or expand an adequate role, diminish an
overdeveloped or strengthen an underdeveloped role, resolve conflicted roles, or germinate an absent role. The refinement of one specific element of a role is then promoted via the effective production of further enactment using the full range of psychodramatic techniques, including a role test.
Interventive interviewing and collaborative practice with family and whānau
Collaboration with a family or whānau is based on the family or whānau being the experts of their own knowledge, and the family or whānau workers listening to, reflecting on and, where appropriate, drawing out that knowledge so the family’s or whānau’s realities, abilities, and solutions are built up. A collaborative conversation between the family or whānau and the worker is the intervention, and therefore the types of questions, the means of asking them, and reflecting back our listening, are key skills. Some of the interventions to be used during the Intensive include circular and reflexive questions, reframing and externalisation, internalised-other interviewing, insider witnessing, ‘consulting your consultants’, reflective teams, action methods from psychodrama, consensual notetaking, letter writing and/or ethno-poetry.
Inviting the participation of family and whānau
Participants are encouraged to approach families or whānau they are currently or have been recently working with to invite their participation in the Intensive. In most cases, this would involve having the family’s or whānau’s permission to present some aspect of their work anonymously to provide the basis for a role play or similar training exercise, and this could result in you taking back to the family or whānau some report on what transpired, such as a brief letter, a relational diagram, or generative questions.
On the second-to-last day of the Intensive (Thursday 20 April), members of a family or whānau that an Intensive participant is working with are invited to join us in-person for a live interview. Information sheets are available for prospective families or whānau, and contracts between them, participants on the Intensive, the agency whose client they are, and me, designed to protect the rights and wellbeing of the participating family or whānau. Participants in the Intensive are invited to take part in the interview either as an interviewer, part of a reflecting team, or as an audience, and, later, to contribute written responses to be sent to the participating family or whānau soon after the Intensive has finished.
Kua ngaro kei ngā pūrehu, Lost in the mists: The situation of family therapy in Aotearoa NZ today
Various historical and contemporary situations that illustrate how family therapy has gone from being highly regarded to relatively marginalised in Aotearoa, are the subject of Craig’s PhD research. Discussion about these, and the future of family therapy in Aotearoa, will occur during the last day of the Intensive.
Craig Whisker
Craig gained his PhD in 2021 from La Trobe University in Melbourne researching cultural justice in the family therapy movement in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a Certificated Educator and Psychodramatist with the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Psychodrama Association, and a Clinical Member and Accredited Supervisor with the Australian Association of Family Therapy. His social work education was on the Pūao-te-ata-tū inspired bi-cultural social work master’s programme at Victoria University of Wellington from 1990-91. He is currently the Psychotherapy Professional Leader at Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland, and works in private practice as a family psychotherapist and psychodramatist.
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