Maggie Carey
Maggie Carey has been involved in the practice of narrative therapy since the early 90's and in the teaching of it for the past 10 years. Maggie's therapeutic practice has seen her working alongside young people at risk, with women and children who live with the effects of violence and abuse, and with people having experienced trauma, particularly as refugees.
Since 1994, Maggie has participated with Michael White and others in a number of community projects relating to a range of issues in people's lives. These issues have included responding to grief and loss within Aboriginal communities, responding to people living with mental health issues and to homelessness, to people living with a disability and to women and children who have been subjected to violence.
Maggie currently enjoys a range of opportunities to teach narrative practice and is committed to making the ideas and practice of narrative therapy more generally available. She is one of a core of group of people who, in partnership with Aboriginal colleagues, are developing and facilitating training for a Diploma in Narrative Approaches for Aboriginal Workers. This initiative is sponsored by Nunkuwarrin Yunti in Adelaide. Maggie has taught narrative therapy in many local and international contexts.
Robert Hall
Rob has been working in the area of gender violence and abuse since 1980. He worked in an emergency counselling service with a team exploring new approaches to inviting men to take responsibility for their violence to and to find ways to ensure the safety and well being of people they had abused.
He then joined a colleague, Alan Jenkins, in the further development of work with men who have perpetrated abuse, and has more recently been focussing on approaches to working with adolescents who have sexually abused. Together with others, Rob and Alan formed an organization called Nada, and have developed a partnership, in this work, with Maxine Joy and Alison Newton.
Rob continues to seek ways of further ensuring that intervention with people who have perpetrated abuse is practiced in ways that are consistent with, and that promote, responsibility, respect, fairness and accountability. A counselling approach which is consistent with these ideas entails the development of practice as an ethical journey.
Rob has shared these explorations of practice in many seminars and workshops, and, as an associate of the Adelaide Narrative Therapy Centre, he looks forward to further collaboration in the development of these practices.
Shona Russell
Since beginning work as a family therapist in a non Government community based organization Shona has been enthused by the narrative approach. She went on to study narrative therapy and has made this the focus of her therapeutic work for over fifteen years. Shona’s therapeutic work spans a range of contexts including a specialist service working with the effects of historical sexual abuse, a family therapy team, and independent practice where Shona works with young people, women, men and couples in response to a wide range of concerns.
From 1992-1995 Shona was coordinator of a community mental health project run through Dulwich Centre, Adelaide. This community based mental health project was designed to provide an option for consumers who had been long term clients of the mental health system and who were searching for an alternative. Amongst other things contexts were created where consumers could come together to share stories of their lives and develop connections with each other as well as develop archives of the knowledge’s and skills they drew on to manage the mental health concerns they lived with.
Alongside her therapeutic work Shona is inspired through her work as a teacher of narrative therapy providing workshops both locally and internationally. She has worked for many years on the Dulwich Centre Teaching Faculty and through this work became very interested in exploring narrative practices in the context of trauma. Such explorations have enabled Shona to work with colleagues in a range of countries including Bangladesh, Columbia, Mongolia, Palestine and Zimbabwe. Shona is currently involved in year long courses in South America.
A key component of Shona’s work is the provision of supervision both for individual practitioners and teams. She is actively involved in rigorous reflection regarding the process of supervision and enjoys the possibilities that emerge in collaboration with others.
In the realms of therapeutic practice, teaching and supervision Shona treasures the connections she has with colleagues and the emergence of ideas that can come from these connections. She is up-lifted to join Maggie and Rob in the development of Narrative Practices Adelaide.
Lisa Johnson
Lisa Johnson is a psychologist and trained teacher using narrative practices in therapy and teaching contexts across community, private practise and education settings. Lisa's interest in narrative ideas began in the late 90's working with young people who found themselves navigating juvenile justice and foster care systems.
Lisa has continued to work with children, young people and families responding to a wide range of problems and dilemmas and currently works as a psychologist in school communities.
Lisa is keen to uncover creative ways with narrative practices and appreciates her involvement in teaching narrative practises locally and internationally and is involved in a writing project with David Epston (co-founder of Narrative Therapy, Unitec, NZ) and David Marsten (Uni Southern California, Director of Miracle Mile).
Terry Callahan
Terry has worked in non-government community settings in Melbourne and Adelaide for more than ten years, attending to a wide range of counselling needs, including depression, anxiety, work-related stress, and responding in particular to community concerns about violence in families and relationships. He has engaged over the years with community education for peace, small communities development, and collaborative work with writers, artists and actors to bring forward the stories of persons marginalised in our society.
His ongoing independent therapeutic work focuses on respectful and accountable ways of assisting men to address their use of tactics of violence, abuse and control in their relationships with partners, ex-partners and children. He is also interested in assisting those suffering the ongoing effects of violence and trauma. An emerging focus is work with adolescents and children who use violence/abuse against parents/siblings or carers.
Terry is also available for supervision, especially for those working with issues of violence and trauma.
Terry has a Masters of Social Work degree (University of South Australia), and postgraduate qualifications in Counselling and Human Services (La Trobe), Narrative Therapy (Dulwich Adelaide) and undergraduate degrees in Arts (Monash) and Theology (Melb College of Divinity).
Sarah Atkinson
Sarah is an emerging Narrative practitioner with a Social Work background who has been working in the Mental Health System for the past three years. She has a strong interest in trauma and the impacts it has in people’s lives and particularly the link between trauma and people’s mental and emotional wellbeing. Sarah is interested in exploring the impact on people’s sense of wellbeing when they are given a diagnosis by the psychiatric system, and how to develop stories of people’s own know-how about their mental health, that can then contribute to an experience of agency in life. Along with a solid Narrative foundation to her practice, Sarah has been working with the Hearing Voices approach for the past two years. She has also been attended training in the Open Dialogue approach and is interested in finding places where this approach can be used in responding to people in crisis situations. The importance of supporting people to connect with their own networks, and to have the opportunity for acknowledgement of their developing preferred stories, has stood out to Sarah as crucial in challenging the isolation that can come from any experience of trauma.
