About Your Speaker

Chris Dolman is a social worker who has been engaging with narrative ideas and practices for the past fifteen years. He lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia. He values and enjoys working with individuals, couples, and families who are responding to a broad range of concerns in their lives and relationships. Chris is currently working as a narrative therapist in a government mental health service, and is also manager for a family counselling service for a community services organization. He holds a Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work and since 2009 has been a member of the Dulwich Centre Teaching Faculty with teaching assignments in China, Singapore, Turkey and Australia.

Family Violence Narrative Therapy

Like other Narrative Therapy courses offered, this course is undergirded by concepts from literary theory, social anthropology, and modern vs. traditional power and gender politic discourses. However, this particular workshop gives special attention to the sensitive work of addressing family violence within the particular context of Singapore. (This course also counts towards the Graduate Certificate in Narrative Therapy).

If you are a part-time or full-time student currently studying counselling or psychology online or mainstream, you can receive 50% off of the regular price of $800 ($400 Net)!

Course Overview

This 2-day essential workshop is designed to provide helping professionals an understanding of the definition of "trauma" in our local Singapore context and how trauma can impact life and health throughout the lifespan. We will discuss the elements of trauma informed care and how this approach will be useful in our practice with seemingly "challenging" and "resistant' clients we see in our community or various counselling spaces. We will also be discussing how we integrate leading and latest treatment methods such as Mindfulness, Somatic and Narrative modalities into a pragmatic approach of practice namely "Release, Regulate and Restore". In addition, participants will focus on using practical strategies  in small group practice case discussions.  

Learning Outcomes

Participants will be able to:
• Understand complex and developmental trauma and their effects on life and health
• Discuss and reframe the impacts of trauma such as distressing symptoms and behaviours of children and adults as adaptations to trauma
• Learn a practical approach of practice called "Release, Regulate and Restore" to enhance regulation and stabilization for persons with trauma
• Learn how to equip clients with regulation techniques to manage trauma symptoms
• Understand concepts and procedures for enhancing the therapeutic relationship and "co-regulation" as methods for stabilization
• Learn a framework on how to integrate leading trauma informed treatment modalities into participants' existing approaches and practices

Who Should Attend This Course

New or existing social workers, counsellors, staff working in the child, youth and family or mental health sectors especially community based social service agencies (SSA), para-counsellors, and other social service practitioners in a range of sectors (i.e. schools, residential homes).

Sign up for the Graduate Certificate in Narrative Therapy (Approximately 1 year in length beginning - end of February each year)

Immerse yourself in narrative therapy ideas this year. This rigorous practice-based program has been developed specifically for Singaporean practitioners. Here is the 2021 program:

1. 10 days face-to-face training in Singapore with Dulwich Centre International Teaching Faculty members: required courses offered this year include: Introduction to Narrative Therapy - Level 1; Narrative Therapy - Level 2 - Part 1; Narrative Therapy - Level 2 - Part 2; and your choice of Family Violence Focused Narrative Therapy or Narrative Therapy for Young Children. Please note: Cost of these courses is in addition to the application and process fee of $2500 for the Graduate Certificate program.

2. A reading/writing program in which you relate the ideas of narrative practice to your own contexts and receive feedback from a Dulwich Centre tutor

3. Supervision on a taped interview of your work including two further Skype consultations

4. The creation of a written practice project and oral presentation regarding narrative practices within your particular context and online forum

Pathway to Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work
Those who complete the graduate certificate program will have this recognised as the equivalent of one of three subjects in the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work (University of Melbourne and Dulwich Centre).

If you are a part-time or full-time student currently studying counselling or psychology online or mainstream, you can receive 50% off of the regular price of $700 ($350 Net)!

What is Motivational Interviewing?

Motivational Interviewing (MI) was brought into Singapore ten years ago from the US and builds especially on the Carl Rogers person-centred approach to therapy. It is excellent in cases of addiction, and as a transtheoretical model, useful for all client’s ambivalence towards change. It also helps individuals move away from unhelpful external motivations towards clarifying personal values, and building inner strength. Based on the ground breaking work of William Miller and Stephen Rollnick’s book, Motivational Interviewing, Helping People Change, this model approach has revolutionized counselling, asking carefully crafted questions within a collaborative conversational style, strengthening the client’s own problem-solving skills, motivation and commitment toward lasting, stable change.

If you are a part-time or full-time student currently studying counselling or psychology online or mainstream, you can receive 50% off of the regular price of $1200 ($600 Net)!

About the Speaker

Mohammed Fareez is the Senior Assistant Director of the Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre and Graduate of the Masters in Narrative Therapy and Community Work in collaboration between Dulwich Centre and the University of Melbourne

Course Brief

Based on the work of Michael White and David Epston, Narrative Therapy involves ways of understanding the stories of people's lives and the ways of re-authoring their stories collaboratively between the therapist and the people whose lives are being discussed. Key concepts and activities covered and used during sessions include:

1. Externalization of the Problem: Where the Person is not the problem - the problem is the problem

2. Re-authoring identity of the individual

3. working with Maps of Narrative Practices including Landscape of Action and Landscape of Identity

4. Re-membering through developing the idea that identity is shaped by social connections and the "Club of Life"

5. Use of case studies and other practical examples

6. Outsider witnesses in-session practice

7. Definitional Ceremonies

8. Personal Agency discussed

9. Gender issues discussed

10. Addressing trauma situations with narrative therapy

11. Absent but implicit concept discussed and used - enquiring into stories of the self beyond the problem saturated story of the individual