This is a skills-based course inviting you to practise using a range of solution focused techniques to engage quickly and effectively with service users and to evaluate the solution focused approach for working in your own context. This course is suitable for people new to Solution Focused approaches and for experienced practitioners who want to understand the latest updates.
Once upon a time, solution-focused approaches relied so heavily on questioning that it could lead to a failure to validate struggles, distress and negative emotions. SF approaches have sometimes been misunderstood to be a rush to ‘quick fixes’ and have therefore been associated with what has been called ‘toxic positivity’. Although this should never have been part of SF approaches, the approach covered in this skills-based course makes it easier to adopt an emotion-focused and collaborative style that honours human distress and instils hope.
As well as understanding the assumptions of a solution focused approach and describing key techniques for working in a solution focused way, this new approach to Solution-Focused conversations moves from a question-heavy approach to validating emotions compassionately.