POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

"The Application of Solution-Focused Brief Practice to Bereavement"

Presenter:  Joel K. Simon, LCSW, ACSW,BCD

(The following are in Adobe PDF format:  Click on each to download)

To those who attended my workshop, thank you.  I hope that what you took away will prove useful and (more importantly) helpful.  Thank you also to the many of you who stopped me and were complimentary.  As a practitioner, Steve de Shazer prided himself on  being a minimalist.  He was fond of saying that solution-focus is simple - but don't mistake simple for easy.  I've been practicing and learning solution-focus for the past 16 years.  Along the way, I've run into conversations that I wasn't sure which direction I should go in.  These were the most helpful to me since it was figuring them out that helped me learn.  The hardest thing about SF, especially for those beginning to try it, is determinedly staying focused on solution talk even when it would seem so easy and comfortable to fall back on what we're used to even though it my not be the most helpful for the patient.  I urge you to read and if the opportunity presents itself, to attend workshops and trainings.  Be careful though, there are trainers out there who know little about SF and yet pass themselves off as knowledgeable.  Here is how to tell the impostors from those qualified to teach:

• Impostors call it Brief (or short term) Solution Focused vs. Solution Focused Brief.

• Who trained them?  Ideally Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer.  I've trained quite a few as has a colleague and friend, Dan Gallagher. If you have a question, feel free to email me and I'll be happy to let you know if I've heard of the person.  If I haven't, I will ask my colleagues.

• Impostors complicate SF by suggesting they teach an approach that is integrated with problem solving models.  For example (and these are actual cases), cognitive behavioral solution focus or solution focus and object relations. 

• SF is characterized by pre-session change questions, future projection questions, the Miracle Question, exception questions and scaling questions.  If these are not mentioned in the syllabus, you can be sure that the trainer is an impostor.

In the old BFTC, over the mirror, there was a bumper sticker (probably taken from some AA meeting) reading "KISS" (keep it simple, stupid!).   Here are the slides:

Dates of SF    Solution Building (vs. problem solving)    Solution-building tools    Application of SF to Bereavement

Transcript of Jackie Session.

For further information contact Joel at joelsim@frontiernet.net