Abstract

An authoritative, interdisciplinary book which outlines how solution focused practice is particularly effective in addressing violent behaviour in clients and service users, encompassing work with both adults and children.

Solution focused approaches have been used successfully with a range of violent behaviours from school-based bullying to severe domestic violence, as well as with victims of violence. Solution focused approaches hold people accountable for building solutions to their violent behaviour. The book shows how to engage clients in solution talk as opposed to problem talk, set useful goals and help clients to develop new behaviours. It outlines the practice principles and working techniques that make up solution focused practice with physical, emotional and sexual violence. Illustrative case studies and practice activities are provided.

This book is suitable for anyone working to help reduce violent behaviour, including social workers, counsellors, therapists, nurses, probation workers and youth offending teams.

Some problems can seem more intractable and impervious to change efforts than others, and violence is certainly one of these, so it is refreshing to find a book that offers such a positive and hopeful approach to work in this field. Judith Milner and Steve Myers are to be commended for their boldness in showing how solution focused approaches can help people move from problems of violence towards preferred lives, and how such approaches can be used creatively, even at times playfully. Their book provides a cornucopia of useful questions directed at change, while keeping safety in mind, drawing from an interconnecting range of solution focused, brief therapy, narrative and Signs of Safety approaches. The plentiful practice examples and practice activities enhance the book's practical nature, which make it likely that anyone charged with finding solutions in violent situations will find something useful inside these pages.
Guy Shennan, Independent Consultant in Solution Focused Practice and Chair of the British Association of Social Workers
Previously a senior lecturer in social work, Judith Milner recently retired from work as a therapist, consultant and independent expert to family courts in child protection, domestic violence and contested contact cases. She is widely published on solution focused practice. Steve Myers is Director of Social Sciences at University of Salford, Manchester. A social work academic since 1995, he has led research projects and has authored and co-authored a series of books and articles about violence, sex and solutions. Judith and Steve both live in Yorkshire.
Milner and Myers have drawn on extensive experience of practice and training to offer what for many could be a radically different and more effective way of opening up discussions about actions which are usually too difficult to talk about, let alone change.
John Wheeler, UKCP Registered Systemic Psychotherapist and President of the International Alliance of Solution Focused Training Institutes