Teaching and Learning with Therapists Who Work with Street Children and Their Families

Abstract

Providing training for people working with some of the most marginalized families in Guatemala and Peru meant establishing credibility as a facilitator; entering organizations as a learner; cocreating training agendas; and working in a format that paralleled a strength-based, resilience focus in therapy. Strategies used for different phases of the work are detailed: multiple ways to gather information, shadowing staff, delivering topics on demand, and creating learning environments with a focus on families as teachers. Key processes included moving in and out of the role of facilitator and participant, entering into the trainings from different vantage points within the organizations, and designing activities with an eye to how they would impact work relationships of staff and clients.

Scaling Up Family Therapy in Fragile, Conflict‐Affected States

“…Similar to Roberts' () example, while practicing in these countries I stayed very close to the language, metaphors, and cultural practices of the people involved in the projects and work I was doing. Work in these settings demands sensitivity to the “personal and cultural systems of meaning and structure” that sustain those in distress during a humanitarian situation (Samarasinghe, ).…”

Family Therapy in Global Humanitarian Contexts

“…Expatriate family therapists who work as consultants outside their home countries must share their subject matter expertise in ways that are seen as useful to the people they are focused on helping (Roberts 2010). Their methods must be expansive enough to transcend traditional family therapy approaches (Morgan and Sprenkle 2007), yet remain consistent to the inherent theoretical umbrella that makes systemic family therapy unique from other disciplines.…”

Couple and Family Therapy Theory and Practice: Innovations in 2010*

“…Their work effectively reengages us with power and challenges outmoded notions of neutrality. Roberts (2010), eschewing hierarchy, offers us an approach for consultation with highly marginalized and abjectly poor families and their workers in Central and South America. Facilitating and participating, Roberts demonstrates the paradox of nonhierarchical expertise.…”

“…Several of the papers pay exquisite attention to the ways that we enter and take initial steps toward our part of shaping relationships with couples and families (Iasenza, 2010;Knudson-Martin & Huenergardt, 2010;Lev, 2010;Roberts, 2010;Watts-Jones, 2010). A reprise of joining, so crucial in Family Therapy practice from the start, these particular papers bring us deep reflections on the myriad processes with which we identify ourselves in relationship to our clients, and the impact of how we enter on the process of therapy.…”

“…Several of the papers underscore the family therapist's responsibility to intervene in broader social inequalities as part of the process of change (Dickerson, 2010;Falicov, 2010;Knudson-Martin & Huenergardt, 2010;Roberts, 2010;Ungar, 2010). Highlighting Family Therapy as social intervention, these authors reflect commitments of our field that stretch back to the feminist critique, whose clarion call was originally published in this journal (Hare-Mustin, 1978).…”