Latest newsletter
Read our latest newsletter, with information about training and other items of Brief Therapy interest.
2010 Training Calendar
Training dates and details for 2010 are now available.
Singapore conference
Michael was the Opening Keynote speaker at the recent 2009 Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Symposium in Singapore.
Solution-focused training in New Zealand.
Our association with Compass Seminars continues in 2010 and Michael is conducting training in New Zealand.
Sign up for our mailing list, to receive email notification of news and upcoming training.
The Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee USA -- the home of solution-focused brief therapy (and where it began).
Here you can find articles by Insoo Kim Berg and the late Steve de Shazer, as well as their books, DVDs and tapes.
The MRI (Mental Research Institute) is really where it all began.
Building on the work of the Bateson project, John Weakland, Paul Watzlawick & Dick Fisch established the "brief therapy project" and introduced us to a brief, interactional approach. MRI continues as a centre for the study of human interaction and the Brief Therapy Project continues.
Don Jackson was the founder of the MRI and one of the early proponents of "the interactional view". He is considered by many to be the founder of family therapy. This useful site about Jackson is maintained by Wendel Ray.
Wally Gingerich was one of the original team in Milwaukee who developed the Solution-focused Brief Therapy approach.
In particular, Wally and a colleague have put together a review of outcome research in Solution-focused brief therapy. Wally presented his review at the European Brief Therapy Association Conference in September 1999 and it was published in Family Process in 2000. An updated summary of the research review is available on his web site.
St Luke's is a family services agency in Bendigo (Australia) who are developing innovative and exciting applications of solution-focused therapy ideas in their child protection and family services work. Through St luke's innovative resources, they have developed solution-focused products and resources - practical and pictorial applications of solution-focused techniques and ideas (visual tools for scaling questions, pictorial ways to find client strengths, etc.).
The Brief Therapy Institute of Denver - my good friends Tracy Todd and Tracey Ayers are exploring the use of the internet for brief therapy training and online appointment scheduling - and a useful monthly newsletter on aspects of brief therapy and have recently added podcasts!.
Harry and Jocelyn Korman are therapists and trainers in Sweden, and Harry is the person who manages the Solution-focused Therapy List. Check out their home page, including a number of useful papers.
Harry's paper "On the ethics of diagnosis" raises some interesting issues about the kinds of questions we use and suggests that being helpful and refining a diagnosis might be mutually exclusive activities. The text of the article is on the website. So are some other useful articles, including his essential chapter about creating "a common project" with clients.
The Brief Therapy Practice is a group of Solution-focused Brief therapists in the heart of London, England and are the leading providers of Solution-focused training in Europe. Their web site has details of training, consulting and therapy.
Chris Iveson, Evan George, Harvey Ratner, Yasmin Ajmal, Jane Lethem, Guy Shennan and Diana Iveson are among the busiest people I know, although they always have time to have fun as well!
They have also established Brief Consultancy - part of their BRIEF group - which offers Solution-focused work for organisations, business and coaching.
Resolutions Consultancy is Andrew Turnell's business in Perth, Western Australia. Andrew is co-founder of the Signs of Safety approach - an innovative safety-oriented approach to Child protection casework, which is firmly grounded in Solution-focused Briief Therapy.
Joel Simon offers therapy and training from his base in upstate New York.
Joel hopes that you will discover his enthusiasm for solution focus through the pages of his web site ... and his web address makes a clear statement about the numbers that work best in scaling questions!
Ben Furman and Tapani Ahola (the Helsinki Brief Therapy Institute in Finland) have applied ideas about "solution talk" to a variety of populations. Their "re-teaming" approach uses solution-focused ideas to help build a collaborative approach to problem-solving and solution-building in a variety of practical situations.
They have developed "Kids' skills" -- ReTeaming with Children: An Educational and Fun Program for Helping Children Solve Behavioural Problems
The European Brief Therapy Association includes some innovative and progressive therapists and teams and includes a strong focus on research.
EBTA is co-ordinating a research project on Solution-focused therapy outcome and the EBTA website includes up-to-date summaries of research into SFBT.
The annual EBTA conference is a key event on the solution-focused calendar. The 2007 conference was in Bruges, Belgium; the 2008 conference in Lyons, France and in 2010 it was Helsinki, Finland. The 2010 EBTA Conference will be in Malmö, Sweden (across the bridge from Copenhagen, Denmark), in September. This year, the conference is jointly sponsored by the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association. There is a conference web site.
Dr Alasdair Macdonald has been a Consultant Psychiatrist in the UK public health system for over 20 years, with clinical experience in acute general psychiatry and management experience.
He offers training workshops on solution-focused therapy, solution-focused approaches to mental health work and skills for managing disagreements in the workplace.
Alasdair has published papers on research into effectiveness of Solution-focused Brief Therapy in psychiatric settings.
Brendan Madden, Melissa Darmody, John Sharry and Karen Ward form the Brief Therapy Group in Dublin, Ireland.
They provide training and therapy and have a number of publications available.
In collaboration with the Mater Hospital, they have produced "Parents Plus" - a solution-focused parent group program which has impressive research backing it!
FKC is a leading centre for Solution-focused work in Sweden and offers therapy, training and consultation.
FKC operates two schools that utilise what they have termed "Solution-focused Education".
Michael Hjerth, is a therapist and trainer at FKC in Stockholm but also has his own venture exploring Solution-focused Change work to organisations.
(He also shares a passion for cool Apple hardware!)
www.openchanges.com (English)
www.fokusforum.se (Swedish)
The Institute for Brief Therapy of Northern Germany (NIK) offers seminars, workshops and training in solution-focused therapy, with centres in Bremen and Berlin. NIK is a founding member of the European Brief Therapy Association (EBTA).
Their web-site is in German.
Mark McKergow and his colleagues are exploring solution-focused ideas in wider systems (including busines and management). The book "The Solutions Focus", written by Mark with Paul Jackson, was rated one of the top 30 business books in 2002.
Lynn Johnson's Solutions Consulting Group has been helping organizations since 1995. "Instead of looking on what is broken and how to fix it, we create solutions that enhance and expand performance."
Sycol, based in Wales - Ioan Rees and his colleagues provide solution-oriented training throughout the UK. Ioan has particularly contributed to solution-focused ideas in educational contexts.
The Solution-focused Brief Therapy Association is an organisation established in 2002 "To foster the exchange of ideas and practices in the field of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy."
The purpose of the association is to hold an annual conference in North America for Solution Focused Brief Practitioners to exchange ideas, learn new stuff, and in general, have a fun time together. The 2006 conference is in Denver, Colorado in November.
Solutions Centre is a new venture established by Insoo Kim Berg, co-founder of Solution-focused Brief Therapy, and Arnoud Huibers, therapist and trainer in The Netherlands. It is an international organization that aims to disseminate the Solution-Building Model through training and consultation.