Training and Consultancy in Solution Focused Brief Therapy (deShazer '85)

May 2008

Welcome to Eileen Murphy Consultants, practitioners and providers of Training and Consultancy in the Solution Focused (Brief Therapy) Approach (de Shazer).

The Consultants:

Eileen Murphy, practitioner and trainer in Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Eileen devised the Prevention & Intervention Programme, a front line resource utilized by seventeen local authorities across the UK since 1993 and The Solution Focused School programme currently being implemented by an inner city London school.

Eileen works directly with self-referred and statutory referred clients to help them achieve change. Eileen's lead specialism in the Consultancy is training staff to work with children, young people and families to prevent family breakdown; school exclusion and youth offending.

Eileen's other lead specialism is in the Drug & Alcohol field: currently instigating new ways of working with Drug and Alcohol clients within the Mental Health system, Eileen has developed the Silent Session method which has already been instrumental in helping hard to reach clients across all fields.

Mawuli Amesu, An experienced Social Work Manager working in a variety of settings including Primary Care Trusts; Residential Care; Education and Children & Families. Mawuli has played a lead role in the Behaviour Improvement Programme, providing leadership and management for multi-agency teams and engaging headteachers in collaborative working.

Mawuli has lead specialism within the Consultancy on Solution Focused Motivational Interviewing and Supervision for Managers.

Kevin Foley, BA (Hons) Econ. PGCE, MA Autism. Author of Asperger Solution. Kevin, whose lead specialism is A Solution Focused Approach to working with Aspergers, has twenty two years of teaching experience in inner city schools.

Kevin developed and headed an inclusion unit in a Manchester school serving the most socio-economically disadvantaged ward in England and works across UK and Ireland as practitioner and trainer with schools and SEN teams for better outcomes for staff and pupils.

Leonard Jason Lloyd BA(Hons) MISecM FRSA is visiting lecturer in Criminal Justice at Loughborough University and visiting lecturer in medical law at the School of Medicine at Leicester University. Author of twenty two books including The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act; An Introduction to Policing and Police Powers; Drugs, Addiction and the Law, Leonard's specialism in the Consultancy is Drugs and the Law. Leonard's work in this area is consulted by the Home Office.

Miller Thomson B.A., Dip Spec. Educ., Dip Educ. As a head teacher of a residential school supporting pupils with significant social, emotional and behavioural difficulties for over 23 years Miller has had extensive experience of using solution focused approaches in all aspects of school management. He has also developed and managed an outreach behaviour support service utilising the solution focused principles.

Miller’s specialism within the Consultancy is as a Gordon International’s Leader Effectiveness trainer and Team Building.

The Approach
The approach allows for future-focused, strengths based conversations to help individuals and groups to create change

Our experience, as practitioners, is that people are more attracted to talking about the start of new behaviour rather than talking about the stopping of old behaviour.

Simple conversations can often be instrumental in helping people move on – who, what, where and when are not only good journalistic skills, they are extremely effective therapeutic skills.

The focus of our work is always that of collaboration with the client. The client is the expert on what works for them; what worked a little in the past; what might work a little in the future - my colleagues and I strive to harness that expertise in the work towards repair and change.

An addition to our use of Steve de Shazer's Solution Focused Brief Therapy, we use the visuals of the Examine, Repair & Move On Approach (Murphy ’93) which I first devised to keep young people focused during sessions. These simple effective tools offer the client the opportunity to identify the change that needs to happen and who can do what to help change take place.

Our practitioner work includes the private and public sector, giving us a great deal of experience spanning work with individuals to working with a family referred through Social Services.

Brief TherapyPLUS is a programme we originally devised for working with families who are in conflict. Elements of it are included in all our training but the whole programme is implemented in our Prevention & Intervention Programme - a whole-team training and project set-up programme, providing a positive and collaborative framework to reduce the numbers of young people and children coming into the care system under Section 20 of The Children Act 1989. Seventeen Local Authorities to date have implemented our Prevention & Intervention Programme as a front line, gatekeeping resource.

For details of our training courses, please either explore the website or contact us direct at info@brief-therapy-uk.com
or Telephone us at 0208 542 9310.

If you would like to engage in discussion or have questions that you would like to ask - then we would be delighted to hear from you - our email is info@brief-therapy-uk.com

Brief, supportive interventions are exciting to implement and exciting to discuss and we are always happy to do so.

Eileen Murphy

"If you always do what you've always done
- you'll always get what you always got"
Anon

"If you put one foot in front of the other - that's walking. A couple more steps and you're dancing"
Eileen Murphy