About Your Speaker
Mr. Vik is a well sought after local trainer with over 16 years experience in training and teaching Motivational Interviewing for participants from the healthcare, social service, enforcement and the academic fields. He has also been in the counselling field for 19 years, spending 3 years in the social service industry and 16 years in the addictions and healthcare field. He has an academic background in both counselling and psychology, teaching at the Singapore University of Social Sciences for over 12 years. He is an executive committee member with the Association of Professionals Specialising in Addictions Counselling, a board member for the Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association and a council member for the National Council Against Drug Abuse. He is currently doing a workgroup project with the Ministry of Health looking at using Motivational Interviewing to work with individuals who have diabetes or pre-diabetes and teaching healthcare educators to better engage patients within hospitals and polyclinics.
Course Brief
This workshop aims to provide motivational interviewing (MI) training to achieve the following objectives:
• Understand the History of MI and it’s intended use
• Address key principles and basic techniques for Social Care Professionals without prior training in basic MI
• Enable the application of MI techniques in working with their specific clients/patients
• Health Care and Social Care Professionals having confidence in using MI on a regular and consistent basis
• Understanding how MI overlaps with other therapeutic methods
• Appreciate how MI principles and techniques can be incorporated into participants daily work
The workshop will consist of basic MI training focusing on topics like:
• An introduction to Motivational Interviewing and incorporating in daily work
• An overview of the basic techniques and strategies commonly utilized within the premise of MI, the spirit of MI as a style and a way of being
• An overview of the principles of MI and ways to elicit change talk
• Exploring how MI started and which group it targets (Pre-contemplators and & Contemplators)
• Challenges in bringing about behavioural changes via the trans-theoretical model (often perceived as a prelude to motivational interviewing and created by Prochaska & Diclementi)
YOUR SPEAKER
Dr. Stephanie Diez-Morel is an assistant professor of graduate social work at Pennsylvania Western University. Dr. Diez-Morel is the co-lead for the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM Gaming Disorder Taskforce where she leads an interdisciplinary group of international experts in Gaming Disorder on proposing up to date criteria for the diagnosis of Gaming Disorder. She is an international trainer and speaker and has presented clinical courses to 10,000 trained helping professionals. Dr. Diez-Morel has authored numerous scientific presentations and journal articles, as well as appeared in international media on a variety of radio, podcasts, and news outlets to discuss the topic of addictions, gaming disorder and other addictions. In 2013, Dr. Diez-Morel founded Reboot & Recover, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing education, prevention, treatment, and research on gaming disorder and other technology-based addictions.
Diez-Morel earned her Ph.D. from Florida International University where she was awarded a student scholar in Health Disparities Research Fellowship offered through the Center for Research on US Latino HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse (CRUSADA) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As a C-SALUD Student Scholar in Health Disparities Research Fellow, Dr. Diez-Morel’s research contributed to the reduction and prevention of health disparities affecting youth and families in the United States. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Dr. Diez-Morel has worked for decades within nonprofit community organizations and in community hospitals providing direct clinical services to children, families, and adults experiencing addiction. In addition, she has provided clinical trainings, education and consultation to address addictions among various communities including medical professionals, counselors, healthcare workers, educators, caregivers, and school aged children.
COURSE BRIEF
Internet Gaming Disorder, excessive social media use and the convergence of gambling in online gaming is a real problem with adolescence and youth in Singapore, impacting them at an alarming rate. Some kids with ADHD and developmental issues like autism and other moderate to severe psychiatric problems are at risk of losing control of their online use. Even kids as young as 4 have easy access to the internet. Some parents or guardians have not used much focus to regulate their child’s internet use when it comes to gaming, social media and other non-academic activities. While the internet has revolutionised the world and has given many benefits to humanity, it also comes with its dangerous downside when not appropriately regulated.
YOUR SPEAKER
Mr. Mohammed Fareez is the Senior Assistant Director of a Family Service Centre in Singapore and Graduate of the Masters in Narrative Therapy and Community Work program in collaboration between Dulwich Centre and The University of Melbourne, Australia.
COURSE BRIEF
Based on the work of Michael White and David Epston, Narrative Therapy involves understanding the stories of people’s lives and re-authoring their stories collaboratively between the therapist and the people whose lives are being discussed. Are you looking for hopeful, effective and respectful ways of working with those who have mental health problems? Have you wondered what Narrative Therapy might look like in a mental health setting or when working with those with mental health problems? Then this workshop will offer clarity and inspiration for you.
About Your Speaker
Carolyn has worked for all of her professional life with children and young people. She is currently a coeducational school counsellor, practicing and implementing Narrative Therapy ideas and concepts with students and staff who seek her sensitive guidance. Her work is informed by a Narrative philosophy based on the teachings of Michael White and David Epston, developed in the early 1990’s at the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide where she also resides. As an international speaker, she shares her passion for giving more space to young people and their views and opinions in a supportive and nurturing way, reflecting her deep commitment to child focused practice. Carolyn has consulted with young people and their families regarding: anti-bullying strategies, the effects of gender-specific violence, family violence, perfectionism and its tyranny, eating problems, drug and alcohol addiction, grief and loss and associated life transitions and change.
Course Brief
Level 2 Narrative Therapy (Part 2) course takes your existing knowledge of NT to a deeper level, providing a holistic framework reviewing theory, using transcripts, video and live stop-start interviews to give practical help. Topics to be covered include: extending externalizing conversations; extending re-authoring conversations from problem to preferred stories; delving deeper into the absent but implicit concept; responding to trauma; scaffolding conversations; stop-start interviews; and the use of outsider witness practices. Here are some highlights:
Externalizing Conversations: clients often come to therapy with assumptions that their problems are linked to their personalities or their identity. Through externalizing conversations and personifying the problem, clients begin to recognize that problems are separate from them, freeing them to see new options for living.
Re-Authoring Conversations: these conversations help individuals notice the “quiet” unnoticed stories of personal strength that are able to support a new perspective and identity separate from their old problem-saturated narratives. These preferred stories may be seen as unique outcomes or exceptions.
Absent but Implicit: there are always past experiences that are not spoken, yet shape the story being “foregrounded.” The absent but implicit indicates that each problem story holds an inverse and deducible story waiting to be nurtured. An example: a client shares unhappiness associated with lonliness implying an implicit desire for real connection and belonging.
There will also be practical helps in Carolyn’s sessions that will help the clinician scaffold conversations assisting individuals to move from the known and familiar towards what is possible to know and what is valued. Finally, there will be examples given using video, role play and the outsider witness technique, helping individuals to nurture a personal preferred story, and move towards a richer sense of a healthy identity within their community.
COURSE BRIEF
Grief Counselling has become vital in today’s world. With its relentless pace and rate of change, the world says, without emotion, “Hurry up, you gotta catch up. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind”. So we push ourselves along life’s highways, always going faster. But we don’t know where we are going. And then we experience a slow down - the loss of someone close, a mother, aunt, brother, or friend. It could also be the end of a relationship or the parting of ways that foretells we have ended a phase in life and need to move on. And COVID-19 too. They all spell GRIEF - the absence of someone we love, the loss of job and predictability and then we bury it in ourselves. Handling grief is critical. We need to know how to handle it ourselves before we can help others as counsellors or therapists. What are some valuable theories? How do we approach grief, given that we will all experience it? What is there to learn? Am I open to change? Who should I turn to? Will I allow myself to feel the pain, or do I just numb it?
About Your Speakers
Ian Poulier is a trained counsellor with extensive experience in counselling youth and young adults. As a counsellor, Ian believes it is important to understand the client in the context of their value systems. Applying a person-centred approach undergirded by a social emotional learning framework (SEL), Ian is continually challenged to bring the clients he engages with to be empowered to reach their fullest potential. He is currently working at The SEL Network LLP and a well-known facilitator and speaker at workshops, conferences, seminars, in both educational and corporate settings. He hosted TEENTALK on 93.8LIVE and mentored focus groups with different schools. He is also actively called upon to give advice and opinions by the journalists of the New Paper. Ian has been a professional Counsellor serving both local and international schools and in a VWO. He has coauthored a book, HeartWarmers, a collection of prose and poetry.
Andrew Ponniah first started his career in audit at Arthur Young, after completing his BACC at NUS. He then moved into education where he taught at Temasek Junior College and Ngee Ann Poly. From there and after his MBA, he took on the mantle of entrepreneur and set up a private international school under the Methodist Mission. He moved into counselling after his Masters at James Cook University. Having set up the SEL Network in 2010 as a counselor training enterprise, he now works part-time as a Counsellor in church. He finished hisGraduate Diploma in Christian Studies at BGST in 2015. Author of two books, Trust or Rust? on Emotional Quotients and HeartWarmers, an anthology of prose and poetry, Andrew is an avid reader and believer in new ideas. Married with four children, he loves the active and balanced life. He is a also a Narrative Therapist who delves into DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) too.
Charlie is an educator-counsellor with a Master of Arts in Counselling. He uses an integrated therapeutic approach, drawing from Motivational Interviewing change-talk strategies, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and mindfulness practices, assisting individuals with life’s complexities, negotiating interpersonal, professional and personal life growth goals. He is also trained to administer and counsel using the Taylor Johnson Temperament Analysis instrument for individuals and couples. Before his call to counselling, he practiced as a dental hygienist in the US and in two local clinics here in Singapore. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education and Fine Art and an Associate of Applied Science RDH degree. He has been married to his wife, Yeng, for 19 years and apart from counselling, enjoys exercising on the Green Corridor, drawing animal portraits, bike riding with his wife
YOUR SPEAKER
David Newman works in independent practice at Sydney Narrative Therapy, is an honorary clinical fellow at Melbourne University School of Social work and is a member of the Dulwich Centre teaching faculty. Recent teaching assignments have included Brazil, Nepal, Turkey, Hong Kong and Palestine. David has just finished up working part time in a psychiatric unit for young people. David is passionate about effective and respectful ways of working with people around mental health and suicidal experience. He is the author of “How we deal with ‘way out thoughts’: A living document of ways of talking with young people about suicidal thoughts” (2016, Dulwich Centre Publications) and co-author with Marnie Sather of “’Being More Than Just Your Final Act': Elevating the Multiple Storylines of Suicide with Narrative Practice" in the book Critical Suicidology (2015, UW Press) and of the resource “Holding our heads up: sharing stories not stigma when a loved one has suicided” (2016, Dulwich Centre Publications). It is possible to find out more about David’s work by watching this presentation: https://dulwichcentre.com.au/assisting-young-people-to-find-their-language-through-the-language-of-others-knowledge-from-an-inpatient-ward-by-david-newman/
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 ways of re-authoring their stories collaboratively between therapist and the people whose lives are being discussed. With more in-session guidance and practice, this Level 2 Part 1 course delves more deeply into the concepts originally introduced within the Narrative Therapy Introduction course.
Session Key Concepts
• Externalization of the Problem: Where Person is Not the Problem, the Problem is the Problem
• Re-authoring Identity
• Working with Maps of Narrative Practices: Landscape of Action & Landscape of Identity
• Re-membering: Developing the Idea that Identity is Shaped by Social Connections and the ‘Club of Life’
• Use of Case Studies and Other Practical Examples • Outsider Witnesses
• Definitional Ceremonies
• Personal Agency • Gender Issues
• Addressing Trauma with NT
• Absent and Implicit: Enquiring Into Stories of Self Beyond the Problem Saturated Story
Founded in 2010 by an ex-group of Teachers and Trainers, the SEL Network LLP is about developing people through effective therapy. The modern world powered by technology pushes the human spirit to the edge . We need therapy to get us back and in control of our lives. We have specialised in 8 therapies offering something for everyone.
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