DO NO HARM

Dear Yayi,

 

 

You left us on a Tuesday. Only two days before that I saw you lying in your bed, in pain. You were sleeping when I was about to leave, so I did not want to wake you. As if you knew, you grunted at me as I turned my back, reaching out your hand. I held it as I kissed your forehead. That would be the last time. I will treasure that simple memory. 

Conducting Interagency Case Conferences

 

 

 

The conducting and facilitating of interagency case conferences has been an undeveloped (and possible ignored) activity in the local Singaporean Social Service Scene. This is interesting, considering the Person in Environment perspective that social workers adopt as their grand philosophy, and the multiple systems that interact with the people we work with. Training programmes (and even literature) on collaboration have usually tended to just focus on how important collaboration is, and only 2 years back, I had the opportunity to attend a training workshop by Barbara McKay (From the Institute of Family Therapy in London). This was where conversations started on how social workers who facilitate case conferences should move away from promoting monological discourses (where each system would just be pushing their own agenda) towards a dialogical one, where dialogue and discussion is promoted towards the aim of supporting the people we work with.

Narrative practices when working with Family Violence

 

 

Mimi Kim's website Creative Interventions  provides an interesting and alternative way of tackling interpersonal violence in the community. Instead of focusing on individualised services and state intervention, the focus is on mobilising the community to take up responsibility in addressing violence. 

Education and resources are shifted back to families and communities to address violence at various stages of abuse. A user-friendly tool kit is also made available for free! This for me, is refreshing in a world where some pockets of practitioners tend to keep important knowledges away from others in the interest of maintaining copyright.