Counselling
Families

​Aims

1. Draw up a group agreement and define groups’ goals.  

2. Help participants to gain an understanding of what a family system is. 

3. Introduce the concept of family as an entity that it is not static but that evolves through time. 

4. To introduce participants to ecological versus individuals concepts of development. 

5. To gain an understanding of “life cycle” processes and their possible impact on the family. 

6. Introduce the concept of a genogram as a tool to track the family history and consider its role in the assessment process. 

7. Understand the difference between drawing genograms with adults and children. 

​Aims

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1. Understand what needs to be included in a contract when working with families and the concepts of boundaries and confidentiality when working in a family context. 

2. To draw a distinction between forming a therapeutic alliance between individuals and families. 

3. To enable counsellors to conduct a family assessment and understand what they need to consider in their assessment of families. 

4. To explore Milan’s approach in relation to assessment through the concepts of curiosity, hypothesising and circularity. 

5. Where to punctuate a story, and our influence in the representation of the system (delineation of first versus second order cybernetics). 

6. Help counsellors understand the difference between circular versus linear causality and its application in the assessment process. 

7. Provide theoretical knowledge about circular questions. 

8. Provide counsellors with the opportunity to practice circular questions. 

9. Allow participants to practice the construction of genograms.  

​Aims

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1. Introduce some of the main theoretical approaches (structural, functional, Milan, solution focused, narrative) and concepts (e.g. triangulation) shared between different family approaches (e.g. reframing, positive connotation, the miracle question, externalisation, unique outcomes). 

2. Introduce Alan Carr’s 3 column model and its integration within a collaborative formulation of the family problem. 

​Aims

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1. Consider the importance of counsellors’ self-reflexivity and its impact on the family.  

2. Facilitate this reflexivity by placing a focus on the location of power within the counselling context and family environment and facilitate this reflexivity through the concepts of social graces and intersectionality. 

3. Emphasise the exploration of the collaborative and dialogical model drawing similarities with Roger’s person centred model, to enable counsellors to ground their practice within this approach. 

4. Conversation as an intervention to dissolve problems. 

​Aims

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1. To assist the counsellor to develop a culturally sensitive practice and frame diversity and diverse problems within the modernist view of multiple realities. 

2. Equip counsellors with tools that will enable them to work with different family problems (e.g. anorexia, divorce, parental conflicts, enlarged families, domestic violence). 

3. Understand the differences within the notion of what constitutes societal norms/discourses. 

4. Working with diversity (considering families through a cultural lens, same sex families, etc). 

5. Working with children in a family context.  

6. Working using creativity (e.g. family sculpting, the river of life). 

​Aims

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1. To review the different stages of family work (initial, middle, and ending phase) and reflect on ending with families. 

2. To provide the group with an opportunity to practice the gained skills. 

3. To reflect on personal endings. 

4. To offer the group an opportunity to evaluate their learning and reflect on how they will integrate the acquired knowledge into their practice.