ABSCo Conference 2016
12th & 13th July 2016, Trinity University College, Leeds
“The Invisible Gorilla at the Gateless Gate”:
Challenging assumptions about sameness and difference that create invisible barriers to inclusion
Conference aims:
This conference will have a strong practice focus. From the starting point of who we are, the conference will aim to explore the ways in which assumptions about sameness and difference can create barriers between individual practitioners and their clients, between bereavement services and the bereaved, and between hospices and their communities. Our unexamined beliefs and prejudices about the other, together with our lack of awareness of how our own otherness may be perceived, can result in a selective attention that prevents us seeing the Gorilla. Through speakers, workshops and discussion we aim to challenge delegates to identify the gateless gates in their own practice and the services they coordinate, the invisible, unconscious barriers that exclude, disenfranchise and disempower those they would hope to include and welcome.
Conference chair: Gillian Clark, Asst. Bereavement Coordinator, St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney
Programme:
DAY ONE
9-9:30 Registration
9:30 Welcome, Housekeeping, Exec introduce themselves, Introduction
9:45 “If it’s all the same to you….”
Beverley Costa, Mothertongue
We can all experience a sense of helplessness and ignorance in the face of difference. We can also ignore difference in a desire to connect, seeing only where we are similar, being pulled into a relationship characterised by over-identification and apparent shared understanding of otherness in an ‘alienising’ world.
How intent and impact can differ and how we can counteract the fear of being perceived as what we most dislike are the subjects of this talk.
10:30 Questions & discussion
10:45 Coffee
11:15 “Who is disabled? An exploration of when the therapist becomes handicapped by the double taboo of grief and disability”
Noelle Blackman, Respond
In this paper I will introduce some concepts defined by Valerie Sinason and Sheila Hollins about taboos and their disabling affect. I will also present some of my research findings about attachment, grief and people with learning disabilities. All of this will be interwoven with a psychodynamic perspective in order to consider the unconscious interactions that can take place.
12:00 Questions & discussion
12:15 Lunch
1:15 Workshops: Choice of 4
2:45 Tea
3:15 “You're a white therapist: have you noticed?”
Sharon Cornford, St Joseph’s Hospice, and Seamus Nash, Kirkwood
Hospice
Based on the work of Colin Lago, Sharon and Seamus will challenge white practitioners to engage with the range of possible meanings, implications and consequences of being white practitioners working with difference.
4:00 Questions & discussion
4:15 Ideas Exchange: “Spotlight on Practice”
5:15 Close
6:00 Bar open
7:15 Evening meal
DAY TWO
8:00-9:00 Breakfast
9:15 AGM
10:30 Coffee
11:00 “'The needle’s eye of bereavement care'.”
Linda McEnhill, St. Joseph’s Hospice & Hospice UK
Ensuring equitable access to bereavement support is vitally important. To fail to do so may be considered as unlawful, may result in an inability to fund or sustain services and may even be considered a breach of human rights; yes it is that important.
This session will consider the multi-faceted aspects of the concept of access, explore which groups and individuals struggle to access mainstream bereavement care and suggest some tools to widen access to everyone who needs it.
Questions
11:45 Discussion groups
12:45 Lunch
1:30 Workshops: Choice of 4
3:00 Evaluation, & ABSCo Chair’s closing remarks
3:15 Close
Plenary Speaker Biographies
Beverley Costa, a psychotherapist, set up Mothertongue multi-ethnic counselling service in 2000. Mothertongue also runs a dedicated Mental Health Interpreting Service. In 2009 Mothertongue won The Queen’s Award for Volunteering. Beverley has written a number of papers and chapters on therapy across languages. Together with Jean Marc Dewaele, their paper: Psychotherapy across Languages: beliefs, attitudes and practices of monolingual and multilingual therapists with their multilingual patients, won the 2013 BACP Equality and Diversity Research Award. She established “Colleagues Across Borders” in 2013 which offers pro bono peer support and training to refugee psychosocial workers based in the Middle East. She set up the Bilingual Therapist and Mental Health Interpreter Forum in 2010. This meets twice a year in London. She produced the world premiere of the play about a cross language couple “The Session” by Andrew Muir, in November 2015 at The Soho Theatre, London.
Dr Noelle Blackman is the Chief Executive of Respond and a registered Dramatherapist. In 1997 she founded a unique NHS Bereavement Therapy Service for people with learning disabilities. This coincided with the closure of the long stay hospitals and the complex feelings that this triggered for many former residents. She is the co-founder of the National Network for the Palliative Care of People with Learning Disabilities. Noelle moved to the charity Respond in 2003 as deputy to the CEO and became CEO in February 2012.
Since 1998 she has also co-facilitated a user involvement group of older people with learning disabilities which began as part of the GOLD research project for The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities.
More recently her work has focussed on institutional abuse, in particular she has been involved in supporting the families and survivors of the Winterbourne View abuse scandal. This has led her to develop a training course for learning disability professionals enabling them to recognise and respond appropriately to the extent that trauma affects the lives of people with learning disabilities. She has also pushed for trauma assessments to be available for people who have been affected by institutional abuse.
She is currently a Visiting Lecturer on the MA Dramatherapy course at Anglia Ruskin University, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire and an Honorary Lecturer at UCL.
She has presented papers nationally and internationally. Her published work includes the books - Loss and Learning Disability, Caring for People with Learning Disabilities who are Dying and chapters in several books including - Intellectual Disability, Psychotherapy and Trauma, Supervision of Dramatherapy and Understanding and Working with People with Learning Disabilities who Self-injure.
Sharon Cornford is a UKCP registered psychotherapist and supervisor, and an experienced trainer. She has been in her role of Bereavement Service Coordinator at St Joseph’s Hospice Hackney for 17 years. London’s East End is one of the most diverse areas on the planet, and also has high levels of socio-economic deprivation. In her years at St Joseph’s, Sharon has worked with thousands of people who are different from her in a broad range of ways, and she has developed a keen interest in the elements that facilitate or hinder working with difference and particularly in ways in which she might be perceived as a white practitioner and the challenges of addressing these issues.
Seamus Nash has been working in a hospice since 2005 as the Family Care Team leader. He is a doctoral research student and is also interested in research. “Despite the difficult work I do I maintain a positive outlook on life and enjoy amongst other things music, family, friends and food!!”
Linda McEnhill is a palliative care social worker by background, she is currently Interim Director of Care Services at St. Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney and seconded Psychosocial Care Lead for Hospice UK. Linda has worked in a number of roles (practitioner, manager, educator, consultant) within palliative, bereavement and end of life care, both in Scotland and England.
Linda’s passion is for ensuring equitable access to services and she has tried to achieve this in each of the roles she has worked in but specifically as Widening Access Manager for Help the Hospices and in setting up (with other colleagues) the National Network for the Palliative Care of People with Learning Disabilities, which she chaired for 10 years.
Committed to lifelong learning, Linda has studied theology/psychology, social work, hypnotherapy and hospice leadership. Of relevance for this session are her MA Thesis on ‘Life story book work as a counselling tool with bereaved people who have a learning disability’ and her Masters in Hospice Leadership Dissertation ‘A narrative review of the literature on equity as it pertains to end of life care’. She has published a number of articles and book chapters, she wrote the Route to Success Publication ‘The route to success in end of life care: achieving quality for people with learning disabilities’ and the Hospice UK publication ‘ Widening Access to Palliative Care for People with Learning Disabilities; Guidance and Resources for Professionals ’.
WORKSHOPS
Workshops will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Some workshops have maximum numbers so please make your booking soon as we are not able to guarantee that you will get your first choice of workshop.
WORKSHOP CHOICES DAY ONE 1:15-2:45
1: “Exploring Awareness of Cultural, Ethnic and Religious Differences in working with Bereavement“
Golnar Bayat
Workshop description:
Increasingly we come into contact with larger numbers of people from cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds different from our own that come to us when distressed or in pain. Bereavement is once such time. In what way can we, as counsellors, make sure that our specific ‘worldviews’: our attitudes, our values and our beliefs, which are vitally important for our existence and integrity, do not act as obstacles to entering into the ‘worldviews’ of our clients from different cultural, ethnic or religious backgrounds. Also interesting is attention to the assumptions that are embedded in the theories of counselling and bereavement that inform our practice. Awareness of such deeply embedded and internalized assumptions will enable us to suspend our ‘knowing’ and delve into the realm of curiosity and ‘finding out more’ and thus deepening the therapeutic contact even further.
Challenge the assumptions that cultural, ethnic and religious differences only belong to those different from us.
Explore the ‘culturedness’ of us, and our beliefs about bereavement and grief.
Examine some of the hidden assumptions embedded in the theories of bereavement that inform our practices.
Explore ways in which we can support our clients with the ‘universality’ of grief and the ‘culturedness’ of mourning, and the uniqueness of their specific loss.
Facilitator biography:
Golnar Bayat is a BACP Senior accredited counsellor and supervisor and a UKCP registered Existential psychotherapist who works in private practice at York. She first came to England as a student and returned to this country years later as a refugee. In her cross cultural workshops, Golnar tries to weave in her experience of coming from another culture and uses that experience to work through possibilities of working more effectively as ‘cultured selves’, within our work settings.
2: “Working with an interpreter in sensitive contexts“
Beverley Costa
Workshop description:
This workshop will explore the issues involved in working with interpreters. Traditionally clinical work and supportive work is conducted between two people and the idea of incorporating a third person into the helping relationship can be unsettling. Beverley will provide ideas, a reflective space and practical demonstrations to think about the best way in which a collaborative relationship can be formed between the Interpreter and the Practitioner for the best outcome possible for patients. In particular we will explore the following topics:
- The ways of working effectively as a triad rather than as a dyad, to include issues of power
- The extent, limitations and professional boundaries of the roles including the role of relatives and friends
- Communicating with interpreters about the nature of your work
- The relationship between the Interpreter and the Practitioner
Material will also be drawn from the latest research on clients’ experiences of counselling/therapy through an interpreter. A series of guidelines and suggested code of practice are drawn up together.
Facilitator biography:
See above.
3: “Inviting the grieving learning disabled person into your practice; some considerations“
Noelle Blackman
Workshop description:
Firstly how can you reach out to this grieving population, are they recognised as having a place within your setting? Once the invisible gates have been opened then what? This workshop will consider the importance of having a flexible approach, of being creative and of not only relying on words. It will highlight that it can be important to recognise that there is often layer upon layer of unresolved loss in the lives of people with learning disabilities. All of this means that it is important to open up any preconceived yet invisible 'agenda' to allow for this.
Facilitator biography:
See above.
4: “A fish out of water? Creative exercises to challenge our assumptions and beliefs and create capacity for empathy’
Paul Parsons
Workshop description:
Using the theory of the Johari’s Window we will explore together what is difference and why we might view others as different to ourselves. Are we in fact more similar than we first thought? There will be discussion and experiential exercises including imagery and creativity to help with gaining insight into our assumptions and belief systems.
Facilitator biography:
Paul Parsons is employed as the Bereavement Co-ordinator of the London Borough of Bromley (delivered by St Christopher’s Hospice) which includes sudden and traumatic death. Paul has extensive counselling experience with a diverse range of vulnerable client groups. He has gained specialised knowledge in clinically assessing and supporting clients who have experienced trauma. Paul is actively involved in facilitating group work, and is an accomplished trainer and supervisor in private practice. He has 20 years of management skills to back up his counselling training, and is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy as well as a PTUK approved Supervisor.
WORKSHOP CHOICES DAY TWO 1:15-2:45
5: “Men in Hospices“
Seamus Nash & Greg O’Sullivan
Workshop description:
Starting from the baseline premise that bias and inequality still exists amongst the genders this workshop aims to explore the phenomenon of Men working in Hospices. Through encounter and dialogue we will seek to explore how men and women work alongside each other; how we work differently; how we think and feel about our work from our unique gender stance. There will be time for some self and group reflective exercises.
Facilitator biographies:
Seamus Nash
See above.
Greg O’Sullivan has co-ordinated the Bereavement service at Sue Ryder Care Wheatfields Hospice, Leeds for the past 13 years having coming from 7years as a counsellor in primary care. “I have had an ongoing interest in “Men’s issues” since attending a Men’s Rites of passage event in Snowdonia in 1989. I have a particular interest in how men encounter the mid life/second half of life transition. I am the proud Father of two sons and sharing my passion for and playing cricket with them has been one of my greatest joys in life!”
6: “Managing Difference“
Tracey Brailsford
Workshop description:
This is a follow up for delegates who have attended the Leading from the Middle study day however you don’t have to have attended the training to attend this workshop if you would like to use the space to explore management difficulties.
You will have the opportunity to reflect on the challenges that issues of difference and diversity present in your management and coordinator role.
The workshop will encourage delegates to bring live issues and challenges to share and problem solve in a supportive environment and to reflect on management issues experienced.
Facilitator biography:
Tracey Brailsford is a registered Nurse who has 13 years experience in Specialist Palliative care, six of which were spent managing a bereavement service at a charitable hospice in Derbyshire. Since 2015 she has worked as a Clinical Effectiveness Facilitator for a large NHS community trust managing clinical governance, assurance and clinical audit.
She has a Diploma in Supportive and Palliative Care and a BA (Hons) Health and Social Care management
7: “Overcoming differences in talking about sex and intimacy“
Bridget Taylor
Workshop description:
Research consistently shows that intimacy and sexual expression are restricted by illness and disability, and are further impeded by the treatments used. Many patients and partners of patients have concerns that they feel unable to voice, and are not addressed by healthcare professionals. Bridget’s qualitative research has shown that couples facing the death of one partner experience disconnecting within their sexual and intimate relationships. In this interactive workshop we will consider the effects on the bereaved partner and explore the challenges in addressing these issues in bereavement counselling.
Facilitator biography:
Bridget Taylor is a community specialist palliative care nurse at Sobell House Hospice in Oxford, and is also a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, where she teaches a variety of courses including sexuality. Bridget is co-author of the Extended PLISSIT Model for addressing sexuality in clinical practice. Her PhD research explored the meaning of sexuality and intimacy for patients and partners of patients living with motor neurone disease or terminal cancer. She has published widely and presented her research findings both nationally and internationally.
8: “Talking With Drums”
Steven Saunders & Juliet Wilson
Workshop description:
“The drum has extraordinary power to touch something deep and powerful in us.” (Friedman, 2000).
This workshop aims to help the participant understand their own “invisible” barriers which are created by their own beliefs and assumptions.
You will be shown drumming techniques which will enable the body to experience itself in a subtle and transforming way. This can then become a direct link to your self expression and creativity in the therapeutic relationship. It will assist the breakdown of the invisible barriers which we and others create between ourselves .
Drumming also connects to the deepest part of ourselves and to those with whom we are working helping both worker and client. This ensures that we can focus together on “relational depth”.
Facilitator biography:
Steven Saunders is an experienced professional drummer who has taught this skill to all age groups. He has specialised in working with the emotional content of drumming. Steven is now working towards his professional qualification as a counsellor with his placement at the Butterwick Hospice, Bishop Auckland. He uses his drumming skills to assist client to connect to themselves fully enabling them to express their deepest emotions and feelings.
Juliet Wilson is Head of Family Support at the Butterwick Hospice Bishop Auckland. Since introducing the Relax Kids programme to the hospice it has been developed further to provide people with different techniques such as drumming, to aid them in the management of their daily lives. She was trained at a basic level in the art of drumming therapy and will assist Steven in his workshop.
Overnight B&B accommodation is available for the night before at Leeds Trinity at £46.80, bookable via the absco website.
