Why does Solution Focus work? Does it really fix my problem?

These questions are extremely valid. If someone is going to invest in their professional development, they want to know it’s going to be worth it. That the acquisition of these skills is going to make a real difference.

Or if a client is going into therapy, or a support service using this model, they want to know that their not going to be wasting their time.

I believe, it comes down to the fundamental assumptions that underpin the approach:

1. That change is happening all the time
2. That there will always be be instances of the client’s preferred future state already happening.
3. That people are inherently resourceful and, are their own best expert in all aspects of their lives.

My experience of working with Solution Focus over the past six or seven years is that positive news is a constant surprise to everyone. We are too used to being bombarded by a negatively focused media, broadcasting bad news 24 hours a day. So our collective mindset is bent on negativity. Yet a reminder of those three basic tenets of the approach does not usually meet with fierce argument.

So, logic tells me that as long as you are absolutely clear of what the client wants from your service; i.e. what their best hopes look like; and you help them create a detailed picture of their preferred future, making it concrete and behavioural; and you can ask questions that put the client in touch with instances of that already happening in their lives; you have but to trust in the beliefs of the approach to allow it to work.

There is no magic bullet, no ingenious ego driven interjection from the therapist. It’s all the clients own work. All we do in SF is try and ask the most useful question to the client, follow the process, follow the client, and “do as little as possible, and get out of their way so they can succeed”.

“In the 30 or so studies done on SFT; effectiveness rates range from 65% (MacDonald, 1994, and Lee, 1997) to 82% (Beyebach, 2000). Recidivism in a prison population dropped 23% in one study (Lindfross, 1997), and youth studies show the same for re-arrest and run-aways. [http://www.psychpage.com/family/library/sft.htm]

Jim Bird-Waddington

You just never know

I have been thinking about stuff that can get in the way of a good piece of work with a client.

 
It seems to me that it’s one’s own well-intentioned investment that is the biggest problem.
You want it to work, you want to hear the client get something out of it, you hope it makes a difference. All these things are well meant, but to me, distractions, from what is a very disciplined approach.

When I studied at Brief, the tutors gave me a very helpful insight: The question you ask is the intervention, the clients thinking and answer is the therapy.

This is a good reminder to me, that just because the answer might sound like this is not doing the client any good at all, you just never know. Having worked very hard in two recent sessions, I was beginning to think; can SF help this person? what will progress look like? At the end of the sessions I always ask the client if they want to see me again. To my surprise both clients were very enthusiastic and said how much the conversations are helping them.

I guess you never know the power of some good, well placed SF questions. I am just resolved to trusting in the approach and its process and believing a difference can be made, even when it appears almost impossible to do.

Jim Bird-Waddington

Why is Solution Focus a suitable tool for Support Workers?

How can something which started its life as a model for family therapy be useful in housing related support? That seems like a reasonable question. As one of my colleagues in the sector said to me ‘our clients come here for supported housing, not necessarily therapy’.

It is the inherent flexibility of SF, that makes it such a useful tool. It is why the successful SF practitioners across the globe can work with Executives of huge companies, children struggling in school, homeless people with a substance misuse problem, and a whole range of clients in between. I believe, it comes down to something my SF supervisor said to me; ‘it’s a useful way of having a conversation’. Once you start to see it this way, translating the skill base to use in support work, social work or education, becomes quite an obvious adaptation. After all, the high impact work in those fields comes about by having conversations.

So, you are a support worker and you see your clients in their own home. The referral may have been their request or by some other person or agency. Whatever the agenda, the work is unlikely to be successful for anyone, if it ignores what the client wants to get out of it. By establishing the clients best hopes from the work, helping them to paint a detailed picture of what those hopes look like, and then connecting them with current instances of that preferred future state occurring; you are doing a great job as a support worker and doing solution focus.

and your best hopes................?

“What are your best hopes from this?”

Seems like a fairly simple question, and I would agree that it is. But it is also the start of a potentially life changing piece of work.

I am the Executive Director of the South Wales Charity - Caer Las Cymru. We work with people who are trying to recover from a life of substance misuse, trying to turn their backs on criminal activity and custodial sentences, or maybe living with an acute mental health problem. We work with people to try and help prevent them from experiencing homelessness. In short we work with people who are in a pretty tough place; and through our work we try to help them become more socially included.

Maybe this sounds like a difficult job to you? Maybe not?

Personally I think this type of work is hugely challenging. There are many reasons for this; never ending news of funding cuts and restrictions, increasing numbers of people turning to crime or substance misuse, a rise in poverty and unemployment.

There is also perhaps, the temptation to work with people in a tough spot in a quick fix way, help them out with some practical solutions and perhaps see a well intentioned temporary fix turn into a failure.

Making a lasting impact on people lives and supporting them to make sustainable change is incredibly difficult. Doing this on the scale that the UK alone requires, at this point in time, is daunting to say the least.

I believe that to tackle social exclusion, make a lasting difference, and assist people to a place of confidence and self-esteem, starts with a quality conversation, and some fundamental beliefs about people.

Caer Las has adopted the Solution Focus way of working with clients because we share the fundamental values of the approach:

• We believe that everyone has strengths and resources to create their own solutions and  build a better life
• We regard everyone as having equal value and treat people with dignity and respect
• We are committed to absolute equity and fairness in everything we do
• We are committed to work with people who experience extreme vulnerability despite the challenges this may present

It is the belief that clients are the best experts in their own lives and they it is they who have the strengths and resources to make the changes that they want, that led us to choose SF as one of our key support tools.

We are always keen to see our clients as being full of competence and so much more than the difficulties they are experiencing; we look for strengths and resources, rather than deficiencies; we give people the opportunity to talk in depth about the future they want, and what they hope to gain from our services that will help them get there. We are also interested in what parts of that desired future are already happening; what the client is doing that is already contributing to the desired future status.

What are my best hopes from this Blog?

The chance to share some of our Solution Focus Journey, highlight some of the success the approach is bringing to our clients, and to keep alive a truly awesome and powerful way of working with people, that was pioneered 30 years ago by Steve De Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg.