Love is Not All You Need: A Revolutionary Approach to Parental Abuse

This case story is a composite of similar family situations where the parents were at risk of harm from their teenage children and commonly the father/step‐father has moved out of home leaving the mother to parent the children on her own. Several of these cases involved physical threats to the lives of the parents. These referrals occurred in a Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Service and a Family Therapy NGO between 1985 and 2005. This approach is offered as a complement to the widely published ‘non‐violent resistance’ approach of Haim Omer and his colleagues. We hope it goes some way to address what Lavi‐Lavavi et al ( 2013 , Journal of Systemic Therapies, 32(4), 79–93). describe as ‘the mother's plight’:

The plight of the mother continues to present a major challenge… We are also seeking ways to allow the mother more breathing space, help her to disengage from abrasive conflicts, acknowledge her contribution and sacrifice, and provide her with vantage points that may help her recognize and enhance small improvements. Hopefully, these measures will enable women to evolve from unacknowledged victims to pillars of the family’ (p. 92).

     

Systemic Approaches to Psychosis Part I — The Systemic Context

The context in which psychosis emerges is explored in relation to current theory and research. The family, social and cultural context is found to be highly significant in regard to the likelihood of psychosis emerging, the focus of therapeutic endeavour and treatment outcome. In particular, the ideas, beliefs and expectations of caregivers appear to exert a profound effect on outcome. Although belief is to the contrary, current research in relation to schizophrenia indicates that a typical course involves a long period (years) of relative incapacity followed by recovery.     

Community development and community renewal: tracing the workings of power

Although Third Way community programmes produce practice opportunitiesthat appear familiar to community development workers, theyalso produce a play of power that is significant in the deliveryof some crucial neoliberal shifts in governance and subjectconstitution. This paper juxtaposes current theorizing of howpower works within advanced liberal polities with stories oflocal practice in urban and community renewal sites. The argumentis that practice stories are often positioned in relation toa narrow spectrum of power relations, and this obscures theways we are currently governed or exercise power in relationto ourselves and each other. A narrow gaze may point to successfuloutcomes of an immediate kind, yet contribute to wider agendasthat more broadly undermine local people and processes. Thequestion posed by the paper is not whether to engage in renewalactivities, but rather how to interrogate the power dynamicsof such engagements in the stories we tell of practice.     

Reviews

The article, drawing on the results of a small research project investigating a cohort of student-practitioners who had studied a course titled ‘Frameworking for Community Development’, considers the implications for teaching within a university setting. The findings of the research discuss such topics as, what a personal practice framework is, the process of creating such a framework by practitioner-learners, and the use of traditions. Within the discussion the article argues for a shift away from using a ‘personal practice framework’, to a ‘subjectively held practice framework’, reflecting an increased awareness that the journey towards constructing a practice framework is itself an active engagement in a community of practice, rather than, or as well as, an intellectual or introspective personal journey. Furthermore, the article proposes that to create an experience of elicitive learning in a community of practice today runs counter to the usual learning style of universities. It requires opportunities to talk, to learn together, and to be with uncertainty and ambivalence, to challenge each other. The article contributes significant new social work thinking in relation to both reflective practice and teaching for community development.     

Systemic Approaches to Psychosis; Part II — Systemic Psychotherapy

An overview of relevant systemic theory is given with particular reference to the concepts of “Second Order Cybernetics” and the “Significant System”. This is followed by an examination of the work of experienced therapists from a systemic perspective. Common features include strategies to facilitate reversal of alienation and disconfirmation and to encourage the constructive co-evolution of relationships between the index patient and close others. It is contended that a systemic approach potentially enables a therapeutic course to be charted and negotiated and that it also offers a valuable instrument with which to evaluate other therapeutic approaches.     

Working with young people from refugee backgrounds in Australia

Social workers who are new to working with young people who are refugees may feel overwhelmed, out of their depth and inclined to defer to powerful psychiatric discourse. Arguing a role for social work engagement with young people as they face the personal, social, communal, cultural, political and economic challenges of settlement, this paper proposes a reflexive, deconstructive and dialogical approach within a broadly ecological model. All settlement tasks require mediation through the powerful discourse (language, values, constructs, social practices) of both the young person's own community and those of the new context. Creating spaces where young people can identify and negotiate the forces vying to shape them underpins and complements the urgent task of combating ethnocentricity in Australian institutions.