Family Therapy Supervision in Extraordinary Settings showcases the dynamism of systemic family therapy supervision/consultation as it expands beyond typical and historical traditions. In this unique collection, contributors write about their innovations, unexpected learnings, and “perfect accidents” in the context of systemic therapy. These essays highlight creative approaches to supervision, present a wide variety of clinical cases and therapy settings, and demonstrate how training takes place in real time.
Each chapter illustrates increasingly diverse settings in which systemic family therapy services are delivered, whether in public mental health care for families across high-, low-, and middle-income countries, in areas of armed conflict or instability due to political violence or war, or stable, liberal democracies with robust public mental health systems. Each setting of supervision is extraordinary in the way it supports family therapy service delivery. Given the wide variation in access to systemic family therapy services, and the diverse settings in which systemic family therapy services are delivered, a set of brief, specific, and lively cases is called for that focus on the dynamic nature of a family therapy supervision and consultation interaction and its influence on clients, trainees, and supervisors.
Working as a family therapist in the world today, an era of global mental health, is as full of wonder and challenge as it was in the time family therapy originated as a profession. It is thus no accident that supervision and consultation work is just as extraordinary. This book will be essential reading for family therapy and counseling supervisors, as well as a helpful reference for supervisees.
Author Biography:
Laurie L Charlés, Ph.D., L.M.F.T., implements systemic family therapy practice in international humanitarian relief contexts, in low- and middle-income countries, and with vulnerable populations in conflict-affected states. She is the author and co-editor of several books in family therapy and qualitative research, including Family Therapy in Global Humanitarian Contexts: Voices and Issues from the Field, with Dr. Gameela Samarasinghe. Laurie has delivered family therapy training content and provided systemic, clinical supervision support to public mental health professionals living and working in such diverse places as Guinea during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, post-conflict Kosovo, Syria, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Burundi, Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Egypt, and Uzbekistan. A 2017-2018 Fulbright Global Scholar and a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Laurie lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Thorana S. Nelson, Ph.D., is an Emerita Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy in the Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development at Utah State University. She developed and has taught the Fundamentals of Supervision and Supervision Refresher courses for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. She chaired the AAMFT Task Force that reviewed the AAMFT Approved Supervisor standards and made recommendations for changes. She also teaches solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), SFBT supervision, and other workshops, including SFBT With Families, also a Routledge book. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and books in the areas of family therapy, family therapy supervision, and solution-focused brief therapy. She is a Clinical Fellow and Approved Supervisor for AAMFT and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband.
