Talking about Choice

Was doing some supervision today and talking about a case of a very anxious mum who seemed over involved with a dependent and anxious child with a diagnosis of Aspergers.  What she wanted – for any “help” – didn’t seem to match well our understanding that her relationship with the child was a part of the issues that we’d like to think about.

This raised a challenge of how do you get to a Choice point if your mutual understandings are miles apart. The clinician I was talking to had actually booked the family into a partnership as they “clearly needed help” (i agree) but not with any mutually agreed goal.

I think the “honest opinion” step of Choice maybe should have been used a bit more. Comments on how close they seemed. What did she think of that? Asking whether mum thought how she felt affected how the child felt or maybe what was her view of successful development or separation. Do you have any thoughts? I think this is trying to get at mums formulation of the situation rather that her experience of the situation…

Just goes to show that although CAPA definitely helps (we think) it doesn’t always make every situation easy!

Exciting times

Well since I last posted we have been to Holland and Wales! And next is to an international conference in Paris to jointly present a workshop with Folk from the Werry Centre, New Zealand.

But the exciting bit is that Ann and I are just piloting a new measure the CAPA FACE.  This is a more detailed evaluation tool for us and services to get a close look ay how near to full CAPA they are and what steps they need to take to get there. The neat bit is that it is an interactive PDF so you can just click the boxes and it works out all the scores for you. We hope to have it available to all through the website soon.

We are also steaming ahead with the new book. It will have some extended and revised content and we want it to be available in September. Phew!