The health and welfare of Australia's Indigenous population is marked by recurring and seemingly intractable issues such as poor access to services, family violence, and high levels of infant mortality. More than 200 years of historical, cultural and political factors have shaped Indigenous lives - and the perceptions of social workers.
Linda Briskman, social worker, academic and author of the acclaimed book The Black Grapevine - Aboriginal Activism and the Stolen Generations, throws down the gauntlet to practitioners and students of social work, challenging them to pursue a better, more informed way of meeting the unique needs of this community.
She covers the issues that Indigenous communities face, with specific chapters devoted to the areas of children, youth, family violence, health, and criminal justice. Case studies are supported by literature and research to provide practitioners and students with a good understanding of the circumstances they will be presented with when working with Indigenous communities.
Good practice is marked by a recognition of the strengths of communities and an understanding of how to acknowledge and facilitate these. This book shows social workers how they can develop their skills in this area and excel in providing services with the best fit for Indigenous communities.
This ground-breaking book, which introduced narrative ideas to the therapy world, presents a respectful, often playful approach to serious problems, with ground-breaking theory as a backdrop. The authors start with the assumption that people experience problems when the stories of their lives, as they or others have invented them, do not sufficiently represent their lived experience. In this way narrative comes to play a central role in therapy. This book also contains delightful examples of a storied therapy. More info
The issue of Childhood Sexual Experiences (CSEs) can be highly controversial, and has generated considerable disagreement and conflict. Such experiences are often framed as child sexual abuse (CSA) within a discourse of child maltreatment. Sexual activity between adults and young children is indeed abuse, and fully merits the moral stance taken by therapists, health professionals and society. However, Childhood Sexual Experiences presents evidence that viewing all CSEs through the same prism of abuse, victimhood and commonly-held perceptions of gender socialisation may not always allow those affected to tell the whole story. Not all... More info
Healing with Stories brings together a stellar collection of some of the world's most prominent practitioners, taking you inside their thinking and processes for working with metaphors. They represent the panorama of metaphor practice in psychotherapy today with considered, humorous, and compassionate case examples that step you through the intricacies for replicating their work in your own. This is a book for family therapists who work with children, adults, and families, as well as for hypnotherapists, cognitive behavioural therapists, narrative therapists, dynamic therapists, solution-focused therapists, and child therapists. In fact, all... More info
