Wednesday 3 July 2019

Jim Duvall  

Brief Narrative Practices. Short stories for single-session and short term services.

Brief Narrative Therapy practices offer ways of rapidly engaging people in richly meaningful and constructive conversations. They can be applied in any settings and are a flawless fit if just a brief encounter is possible and when all the time you have is now. This training will address findings from Jim’s research at a training and research institute where he worked for many years and through a policy paper that he co-authored (Duvall, Young and Kays-Burden) “No more, no less: Brief mental health services for children and youth,”that demonstrates the effectiveness of collaborative, competency-oriented Brief Narrative Therapy. The significance of story as it applies to brief and single-session therapy will be thoroughly explored. Peoples’ lives are organized through stories, which include their beliefs, purposes, commitments, knowledge, abilities and skills. More often when people go to therapy they are not at their best and are distracted from these abilities, resulting in an impoverished and restricted storied experience, leaving them less able to stand up to problematic circumstances in life. The purpose of Brief Narrative Therapy is to make visible gateways to subordinated storylines of personal agency. These practices contribute to accessible, ethical, collaborative, and competency oriented services that are committed to getting people the help they need when they need it. Presentation, recorded examples, experiential exercises and a handout package will create a comprehensive training experience. Participants will be introduced to skills they can take into their practices immediately.

Jim Duvall is the Co-Director of JST Institute LLC and the Editor of Journal of Systemic Therapies. He is an educator, trainer, consultant, author and editor. Jim is recognized for his extensive practice and research involvement in brief and narrative practices. He consults with organizations throughout Canada, US, Australia and Asia about how to integrate brief and narrative practices with socially just principles in order to create accessible, collaborative, competency-oriented services for people.Jim served for over 20 years as the Director of Training and Education at Hincks-Dellcrest Institute in Toronto, Ontario and previous Director of Brief Therapy Training Centres-International. He has spent over 300 hours studying and collaborating in training, writing and community projects with Michael White. Jim’s publications include numerous books, book chapters, articles and a policy paper. When he is not writing, teaching or training he can be found playing music with his friends or boating on the Gulf of Mexico with his partner, children, grandchildren and their dog, Banjo.