Talk: Our best hopes becoming true : SF principles as UK and Rwandan health policy

 

Dr Dominic Bray

For more years than some of us may wish to remember, biomedicine and unreconstructed CBT, like tall trees choking saplings, have claimed ‘gold standard’ status, dominating national ‘best practice’ guidance / policy and made it challenging to undertake, still more to be funded for SF work. Perhaps that has been their unique way of co-operating…..backed by the increasingly influential voices of ‘experts by experience’ ie patients, we now see powerful economic, as well as effectiveness arguments to ‘do something different’ . Explicitly (or implicitly) SF principles are now becoming not just respectable, but even required! Some encouraging examples will be offered from UK and Rwandan experiences, and future challenges, not least the need to live up to expectations, will be discussed.

Dr Dominic Bray … I have been using, teaching (the best bit!) and publishing in SF since 1996 as a clinical psychologist in healthcare settings and cannot imagine using any other model. I was privileged to be the founding Chair of the UKASFP. My current passion is working at a UK national level with the Royal College of General Practitioners in their Collaborative Care and Support Planning initiative, where I take a lead in helping to define and embed what optimal GP-Patient conversations should look like….ie Solution-Focused! I have recently worked in Rwanda teaching there and was pleased to notice that they have a wish not to make the same mistakes, ie reducing helping people to a de-humanised ‘process’ driven by spreadsheets, that we have. Aside from all that, I have three children, two equally badly behaved dogs, and a particularly dull car.

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