Therapeutic Documents - A Podcast Interview

Transcription

1 Therapeutic Documents - A Podcast Interview Brittany Hey, SKATTLE blog readers! This is Brittany touching base audio wise. We thought that with our new SKATTLE speak publication coming out, we ve been thinking a lot about different types of documenting and capturing ideas that we might bring this blog post to you in a new way, rather than our standard written form. With those ideas that we ve been thinking about, we thought it might be cool to have a chat to Peta, one of our counsellors here, about What is documenting? What are these ideas and where have they come from? What kind of benefits can they bring to clients and workers in the human services field? So, I m here with Peta. Hey, Peta! Peta Hello! Brittany - I just thought I might ask you few questions with this new magazine coming out with different ideas of how therapists, guidance officers and other workers might use these documenting ideas. What is a therapeutic document? What does that mean and what kinds of documents exist currently? Peta Well, there s lots! And there s a really rich and long history, particularly within narrative approaches to counselling that has to do with therapeutic documentation but other frameworks use it as well. There s lots! It can be a way of staying connected with a client or a family between sessions, it can be a way of offering a summary to a client at the end of a session, and it can be letters or documents of invitation. They re ways of recording the stories that we hear and using the person s words. They can also be really awesome tools, I find for myself, for reflection on my own practice when I have to write something and think about well, why am I doing this and how am I going to offer this to a particular client? It really has me thinking a bit more rigorously about the sort of questions I ask and the conversations that I have with people. Brittany Okay great, well what kinds of documents have you been writing lately? When you write a document, is what you re aiming to capture different depending on the document? What are your focuses when you re doing these written forms of documentation?

2 Peta Well, it really depends on the client or family that I m seeing. And first of all, is there an interest in this? We have to suss out whether it is appropriate in terms of literacy levels or who is going to read it. Also, is it going to be safe for whoever reads it? Also taking into consideration privacy issues. That s sort of the first job, is deciding if this is something the client is up for, and I talk a bit about the intention of it. It s a way of us staying connected but also for them to stretch their thinking between our face-to-face sessions. Then, the second thing I do is, when I have a therapeutic conversation or session with someone, and when we come out of it I ll have a think about What were the main themes of the conversation? How might these be captured in a document and how will that suit the particular person that I was working with? Often, it s a letter to people and I offer it to them as a way of saying well, here s a summary of what we talked about so that they can see their words recorded, and then also I might put some questions in there that have them ticking over some of the things in between our face-to-face sessions. Letters are really nice because they re fun and so much of today s communication is electronic. Particularly with kids, we send the letters out so that there s something that they get in the mail and that it s addressed to them. Often, with supervision clients, I might send an . It could just be a list, it might be a bullet point list of some of the points that really stood out in the session. If they re really interested in process, I might include the map if we used a particular map during our conversation and I might offer it back to them in that way. With kids, sometimes it s a story. If I hear a story of a particular skill or knowledge that a young person has held onto, particularly in getting them through a tricky time, I might write that up as a story about that skill. There s lots of ways! Working with lots of different people means that your creativity keeps being pushed and stretched, which can be fun. But those are the standard documents I use. Brittany - Okay, so even though these different types of documents exist there isn t necessarily any rules around them? Is it more just based on an intention rather than a certain way of doing things? Peta Yeah, absolutely. We need to be clear about what the intention is. Does it benefit the client? That s a thing that we want to suss out. Does it benefit me as a worker? If I spend 2 hours writing a document for a conversation that lasted 50 minutes, that is not an

3 efficient use of my time. Also, does it benefit that organisation that I m working with? If you can be considerate of these points, you can let your creativity take you wherever. There s lots of really inspiring examples. There s been lots written about how documentation can be used in therapy so I m always still really inspired by different ways that I hear people doing it. Brittany And how do you think those different ways of exploring documentation can help workers to better their own practice? Do you have any ideas of things that you feel like you get out of writing these letters? Peta Yeah, well I m really interested in writing and in words and language. So that s another thing, it needs to be an interest that aligns with them. But for me, like I mentioned, that push to be creative I realised pretty quickly that I can t keep churning out the same letter to the same person or the same template because it s going to be boring for them. So, it has me looking for ways to open up how I will offer this practice in different ways. And like I said before, when I sit down to write a letter, it has me thinking more deeply about the conversation and the person I ve spent time with. It has me thinking about what went well or what worked well in that conversation and where might it go next time? Also, are there other things I might want to ask? Sometimes I notice gaps and I think Oh, I wish I d asked that question! so I can put it in the letter to them now or maybe that s something that I can ask next time. It has me revising my own practice and it helps me to look for ways to connect people. I think that s connected to the creativity part but sometimes, you know, if a child has come out with a list of tips of how they have managed to get through the experience of their parent s divorce, sometimes I ve been able to link that information with another young person who comes in who might be going through a similar issue. When I ve got permission from the original family to share that information, it s like you re bringing people together but they don t even have to be in the same room. It has people thinking I m not alone going through this and I can really tangibly see the ideas and knowledge that other people have used to get through this. I guess it has me looking for ways to connect people, as well.

4 Brittany Okay, so it goes beyond just capturing the content of a conversation? It sounds like it gets you looking deeper into, not only the process of the letter itself, but the process that this can influence on your actual further sessions and trajectories you might go in when working with these people in the future? Peta Yeah, absolutely. I want to see how that is all working together and if there comes a point where it s not working, I ll always use that as part of the next session. We ll talk about whether they ve received the letter or the story and what was that like? What do they want to take from that into our session today? But if it turns out that they re not interested or they haven t read it, it probably means I didn t set it up well in the first place, or it means that we just look at that and whether that s a useful practice for them. But, I have found that with most people, I don t think I ve ever had anybody who s said they don t want a letter. I ve found that they have really appreciated it as well and have found it to be a useful tool for them. Brittany Okay, so what would be your tips if practitioners were wondering how to implement these skills of documentation? Is there a key thing that you would recommend to everyone that they try to do when implementing these processes? Or a couple ideas? Peta Well, I m trying to think of what was helpful to me. One was reading up on some other examples, there s a few key documents that I go back to. One is Hugh Fox, he s written a nice summary about therapeutic documents and you can just Google that. Also, Alice Morgan s book which we ve got at the bookshop has a really nice summary of how documents can be used and I find myself going back to that a bit. I had to get into the practice of how I took notes in sessions. I found that when I was at uni, there was a bit of a directive to not take notes because there was this idea that it would break your contact or break rapport with a client. But again, I ve found that if I set that up well, and the client is clear about why I m taking notes, and I m always very clear that it s because I want to capture their words, there s never been a problem with that. Sometimes, they help. We write things in sessions together and we might be brainstorming on butchers paper. But I ve found that to be pretty important, so that when I come to write a document, I can be sure that those are the words that the client used. So, for me, it s been really important to take notes in session. And also to have fun with it, it should be something that adds to your practice and adds to the therapeutic experience for the client. So, find the fun or the

5 creativity in it and look for the ways of how it will work with that particular person. They re not very clear tips, but the first one is to do a bit of research around it, take some notes, maybe that s a practice thing and have fun and enjoy it. See if it s a thing that fits for you and the sort of conversations that you want to have. Brittany - Awesome, well thanks for chatting with me about that, Peta. It s something that a lot of people who see us for training are interested in and I thought it was important that we capture those ideas and talk about what are the intentions behind this? And also how can people bring that into their workplace a bit more? I ll include those references that you mentioned in the link below so people can look at where to get those. Also, if youre interested in branching a bit more about these ideas and what these documents may look like, get in contact with us about our SKATTLE Speak Magazine. There s heaps of really good examples in there of different ways that you might write a letter or capture a skills story like Peta was talking about. So, if that s something you re interested in, please contact us on the button below and we ll see if we can get that out to you as soon as possible. Awesome, thanks guys! Thanks Peta. Peta Thank you, see you.