PRACTICE NOTES
News, updates and practical resources for social workers and mental health practitioners in South Africa. Registration and CPD news, tools you can use in practice, and honest writing about the work itself.
New pieces added regularly.
Professional Development
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Resilience is not a virtue
Resilience Is Not a Virtue. It’s a Relationship. We have turned resilience into a personality contest. We hand out the word like a medal — she’s so resilient, he just bounced back — as though some people are simply built tougher, and the rest are making excuses. It is a flattering story if you are…
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Problems to Possibilities
From Problems to Possibilities: A Short Introduction to Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Most of us were trained to assess problems. We learned to take a history, map the deficits, and build an intervention plan around what is broken. It is a familiar way of working, and for many clients, it quietly deepens the very helplessness we…
Practice Life
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Social Workers should not supervise Child & Youth Care Workers
Why Social Workers Shouldn’t Supervise Child & Youth Care Workers It’s a habit built over decades: in residential care centres across South Africa, the social worker supervises the child and youth care staff. Nobody questioned it, because for a long time there was no reason to. That’s changed. Child and youth care work is now…
Practice Tools
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Developmental Value Systems
Listening for the Value Underneath Spiral Dynamics in Action Most of the disagreements we sit with in a therapy room aren’t really about the facts. A couple arguing about whether to move cities has usually agreed on the commute times and the rent. What they haven’t agreed on — what they may not even have…