Not for the faint‑hearted: Supervising work with high‑conflict families

High post-separation parental conflict can be extremely stressful for workers and supervisors alike. How to help children who can become invisible in the shadow of the conflict is a continual practice dilemma.  Practitioners can leave the field feeling disillusioned and demoralised.  The work is often imbued with a sense of futility, dismay and hopelessness.  Sticking to systemic principles of open practice and collaboration can start to feel like a distant dream, an unobtainable goal. This workshop aims to give supervisors and supervisees additional tools for dealing with the stress and complexity of these situations which will ultimately help the parents and especially the children caught up in the web of unhappiness which accompanies high conflict.

Some of the issues which particularly arise in such work are:

• staying child focused,
• agreeing realistic goals, often very small, (a difference that makes a difference?)
• recognising and celebrating achievements and progress
• working with entrenched hostility,
• protecting oneself

Using a lens of trauma-informed practice and integrating knowledge from current neuroscience research, the presenter applies an overall Attachment Narrative approach. In particular this workshop will illustrate an adapted form of the family attachment interview to explore supervisees’ relationships to conflict.  A particular form of tracking is used to explore impasses in the work, including the therapeutic relationship, goal setting and the danger of secondary traumatisation. Participants will have the opportunity to use these tools and explore their adaptation in relation to their practice contexts.

About the speaker

Dr Chip Chimera is a systemic family therapist and psychodrama psychotherapist with many years’ experience of working with family conflict.  She is an EMDR practitioner and an established trainer and supervisor in the UK.