Working and Collaborating with Families and Social Networks: Developing Systemic and Dialogical Practice in Teams

“Following the publication of the British Psychological Society’s ‘Family Interventions in Psychosis’ guidelines, the workshop will be a chance to consider current thinking on working with families and social networks and how to introduce this into teams. In addition to sharing aspects of systemic and dialogical theory relevant to developing teams, exercises will assist in thinking about useful practices to implement within teams (e.g. reflecting) and ways to get beyond common dilemmas and barriers to working with families and social networks.”

Simon Platts is a psychologist that has completed Open Dialogue and systemic family therapy training, in addition to advanced training in systemic supervision. Simon has worked most of his career with people that experience severe mental distress, for example voice hearers, people that see visions and those that are extremely suspicious and mistrusting of others. This has happened in different contexts – early intervention, community mental health team, recovery & rehabilitation units, mental health wards – and he is currently the Psychological Therapies Lead at aspire, the Early Intervention team in Leeds. Simon has a particular interest in the Open Dialogue approach (Jaakko Seikkula and colleagues) and has incorporated these practices into the Barnsley and aspire Early Intervention teams. Simon was a collaborator in developing the British Psychological Society ‘Family Intervention in Psychosis’ guidelines, co-writing the chapter on ‘Different ways to work and collaborate with families and social networks’.

Alexandra Gill is a family therapist and systemic supervisor. She has spent most of her career working with extreme reality states and extreme emotional states, working towards lessening the impact of these on everyone in the distressed system. She has worked for Bradford and Leeds’ early intervention teams, making use of collaborative and dialogical practice, and is currently the lead for the Leeds Family Therapy Service. She is enthusiastic about generating ways of working with difference, and with families and support networks differently. This includes creating new referral pathways, offering a range of interventions, and offering early network meetings to engage wider systems as soon as possible in shared meaning making.