Institute of Family Therapy

We are delighted to announce that from autumn 2012, subject to approval, the four year training programme will be validated with the University of Bedfordshire. This is an exciting new development and will see IFT’s courses located within the Department of Applied Social Studies which also houses social work and nursing training.  The University has a good reputation for practice training amongst the professions and also has an excellent record in research in these areas. It is also familiar with systemic courses, having been the validating partner for other systemic courses in the past.

We are delighted with this development and look forward to a long and mutually beneficial arrangement to take us into the future.

The Institute of Family Therapy welcomed Dr. Karl Tomm for a very successful two day workshop in June last year and we are delighted to announce that he will be returning this April to present another two day event. Since his important papers in the late 1980,s on Interventive Interviewing, Karl has continued to work on making further distinctions to the categories of questions and has developed a framework that can be used in a range of contexts. For example in 2005 Karl collaborated with Carsten Hornstrup to extend circular and reflexive questions into management environments. This work continues and Karl is interested to know about others’ experience of using his framework in innovative ways.

Many of you will have received the AFT mailing which highlights the Munro report and the Reclaiming Social Work model in Hackney. What some of you may not know is that the Institute of Family Therapy has been actively involved in delivering systemic training to the workforce in Hackney Children and Young People’s Services for the past 3 years and we have secured a contract to continue to deliver training for the next 3 years.

It has been very exciting and rewarding to be part of the Reclaiming strategy which incorporates systemic ideas into social work practice. The results so far are very gratifying with larger numbers of social workers at all levels completing the Foundation level training and Intermediate level training. In fact a small number of social workers and other professionals from Hackney are now on the Masters course.

In addition to the systemic courses, IFT also provides action learning sets to a range of professionals in Hackney Children and Young People’s Services from Independent Reviewing Officers, Senior Managers and Unit co-ordinators (administrators). This layered approach has made an important contribution to the organisational commitment in Hackney to embrace systemic ideas at all levels of practice and management.

In the context of IFT’s success in Hackney, we are now involved in delivering introductory, intermediate and supervision courses around the country.

I would like to thank the following people who have participated with me in this exciting development and I look forward to sharing continued success as we move into the next phase of our contract with Hackney. Thanks are due to the small team who ensure that this work is of an excellent standard, Dana Mills-Powell, coordinator of the Foundation course, Enid Colmer, coordinator of the Intermediate course, Chip Chimera, Sumita Dutta and Nick Pendry, and Veronica Padilla who supports us administratively.

The Institute of Family Therapy and Relate 2nd Joint Conference, 28th and 29th October 2010.

Challenging Dominant Discourses in Sexuality

This second joint conference between Relate and the Institute of Family Therapy provided a wonderful opportunity for practitioners to grapple with some important and challenging ideas about sexuality in our society and in our practice rooms.

Despite the significance of the topic the conference attracted small numbers which may in part be due to the changes in funding of continuous professional development events, although the speakers had other ideas, which were to do with the topic and practitioners’ reluctance to consider such issues. Whatever the reason, we had an intimate gathering of about 30 participants for both days.
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