Coming soon ...

The Strengths Approach

A strengths-based resource for sharing power and creating change

Over the years St Luke’s has provided training and consultancy services in strengths-based practice to thousands of human service workers and hundreds of organisations. In The Strengths Approach principal trainer and author, Wayne McCashen, gathers together the material that is explored in these trainings. He clearly and comprehensively describes the ideas, values, beliefs, and frameworks that help create respectful and socially-just ways of working with people. This book is full of invaluable practice wisdom gathered over many years and anecdotes and examples of strengths-based practice in action.

The book explores:

• Principles, skills, tools and frameworks
  
• Power-with and power-over
  
• Labelling
  
• Strengths and exceptions
  
• Pictures of the future
  
• The column approach
  
• Client-owned recording
  
• Supervision
  
• Community building
  
• Organisational culture
  
• … and much more.
  
  

The following is a short extract from the opening chapter:

When asked the question, ‘What sort of society do you want?’ most people describe qualities such as social harmony, peace, justice, respect, sharing, mutual support and purpose. When thinking about this, people often imagine a society different to the one they observe and experience. The impetus to do this comes from experiencing and observing what happens when these qualities are not present.

However, the capacity to imagine what ‘could be’ is made richly possible by our lived experience – people’s personal experience and observation of what happens when respect, collaboration, inclusion, justice and support are present. In other words, people have aspirations that people are made possible more by their positive experiences than their negative ones. These experiences are lived every day in communities, groups, neighbourhoods, families, workplaces, schools, clubs, other organisations or institutions, as well as in random encounters, lateral ties and informal links.

The connection between people’s strengths represented through real stories of lived experience and their aspirations for something better, is the key to every successful action for change. It is crucial to hope and an essential characteristic of the strengths approach.

A must for social workers, educators, governments, community groups, organisations, businesses, families, teams and anyone interested in socially-just ways of sharing power and creating change.

The Strengths Approach is due for release at the beginning of January 2006.

You can pre-order your copy through our online catalogue.

Softcover, 240 x 170mm, 208pp, includes annotated bibliography
ISBN: 1 920945 13 X
Cat No: 8007 AU$44.50

A fittingly fun-filled launch for Wonderful You

Innovative Resources’ most recent release, Wonderful You, was launched in our bookshop on October 17 as part of our RENEW Week of workshops. It was a joyous celebration with the author Mundy Fox (pictured), St Luke’s CEO Andrew McCallum, more than 40 guests, a spectacular Wonderful You chocolate cake supplied by Country Cakes, and a room full of bright, affirmation-emblazoned helium balloons thanks to Danecy party supplies.

Wonderful You is a set of 26 alphabetised cards or stickers providing creative and fun ways of saying, ‘Well done!’ to children we live and work with. Self-esteem and confidence are built on receiving the recognition, praise and encouragement of significant others. Wonderful You uses playful, sometimes outrageous, language to make kids of all ages feel special.

There were plenty of kids present on the night to ensure that everyone remembered why a resource such as Wonderful You is so worth celebrating. The CEO left with a lingering memory of his own in the form of a well-iced shoe.

Well done, Austin! What a fabulous shot! Your aim was simply serendipitous!

Wonderful You also provides countless opportunities for children to engage in play that increases language competence and other important literacy skills. At the Wonderful You launch, Anne Deal shared this encouraging story with me:

Anne’s granddaughter, Sunny, was about to turn five and she wanted to do something special for her. Anne made a bag of surprises for her. There was a skirt she’d made her, some favourite food, and a set of Wonderful You cards. Sunny had never shown much interest in the alphabet before, but she loved Wonderful You.

She soon made the connection that each of the cards had a different letter of the alphabet on it, and, after sounding out a few letters phonetically, that there were lots of other things to find within each card that began with the same sound:

B…B…Bike, B…B…Bath, B…B…Bus

Sunny began to pick her favourites straight away. She loved the ballet dancer in the bath, the octopus playing the organ, and the dentist feeding his patient chocolate donuts.

A few days later Anne and Sunny were playing eye-spy in the car. ‘Normally we play by using colours,’ Anne said. ‘But I asked Sunny if we might try and use the sounds – like on the Wonderful You cards. “Gr” for grass – “Tr” for tree – that sort of thing. She picked it up straight away.’

Anne’s story is just one example of how Wonderful You can build self-esteem, not only by using the affirmations on the cards, but also the confidence that comes with learning literacy skills.

Signposts lead to Thailand

Over the past four or so months I have been travelling to Bangkok to complete some training with World Vision in a new model of staff care they are adopting. There were some opportunities here also to explore self care with staff. At one stage participants were exploring their spirituality and I used the Signposts cards. This was a powerful experience. It gave the participants opportunities to safely explore their own spirituality, to put words to their journey, and to the pain and confusion they were currently feeling from their involvement in being workers on the ground in the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami. In this particular training, there were workers from all four tsunami regions, some strongly Christian, some with missionary zeal, some who just no longer knew their beliefs, or felt safe with their beliefs. These cards, however, gave everyone an opportunity to be safe with their feelings and thoughts.

Annie Townsend
Social Worker & Aid Consultant, World Vision

A review from our Shelf List

From Me to You
The life-changing power of letter writing

By John Holton

Rat has got the dressing-gown blues; you know that miserable feeling when you just can't be bothered washing your face, combing your whiskers and facing the outside world?

But a letter from an anonymous admirer, telling rat how much he is loved and valued as a friend (a letter he reads ten times just to be sure), snaps him out of his lethargy, and he embarks on a search for the letter's author.

From Me To You is a perfect example of a seemingly-simple picture book's ability to create change - in this instance to make us think about those we love and value and the essence of true friendship. It’s also a reminder that letter writing can have implications far beyond what we imagine.

In this instance, the simple gift of a compliment sparks a series of events that brings this group of animal friends together in a very special way. Like so many of us, Rat has become blind to the respect and affection that his friends feel towards him. Through his search for the identity of his mystery gift-giver, Rat is reminded of the qualities of friendship - that our best friends share both good times and hardship; that good friends stick by one another and share one another's joys and passions.

With the motivation of his special friends, Rat is able to reach his full potential and shake off the dressing-gown blues.

And while he never finds out the identity of his secret admirer (whoops, I've given away the ending), he is able to pass-on the gift of a compliment to poor old Bat, who is 'lonely and unhappy and still in his dressing-gown'.

In an age where global bullying is rampant; where terrorism has become a daily threat; where instances of road rage and mindless violence are commonplace, From Me To You is a gentle reminder of the fundamentals of friendship - love, respect, kindness, connectedness - fundamentals that have the potential to be life-changing.

From Me To You
Author: Anthony France
Illustrator: Tiphanie Beeke
Publisher: Gullane Childrens Books
ISBN: 1 86233 504 4
Cat No. 6330 RRP $14.95

Micro-story of the month

The Same Boy

The same boy is in every primary school I go to, and he’s always stuck.

I bomb around from school to school with my specialist workshops and I’ve forgotten half of them the moment I’ve finished my report: a daze of trains, taxis, staff-rooms, classrooms of children with eager hands raised, children settling down to the enjoyably challenging exercises I’ve set; but as I walk round the class, I find the same boy is there again, and he’s still stuck.

He’s a small boy: trimmed black hedgehog haircut, nervous mouth, evasive eyes, and he can’t even articulate what the problem is.

Discovering him, I sense a chance to reach back into my own desperate past to change things, and try ever harder to get through, to help; but somehow I’m still never doing quite the right thing, and what’s almost worse, I feel I never will; and there we both are, stuck.

© David Bateman