Workshop 24, 26/5 16:30-17:45

Willem Beckers, Belgium - and Staff member & Systemic psychotherapist at Interactie-Academie, Antwerp, Belgium

Get The Fear out of here! How family and friends joined forces for a girl that couldn't get any sleep…

This workshop tells the story of the quest a 9-year-old girl and her therapist set out on together, during which they tried to find a way to deal with the girl’s severe anxieties, which also had a significant impact on her family life. What started out as a simple brainstorm during a stuck-in-a-rut therapy session eventually exploded into a demonstration by family & friends, who collectively made the decision to pick a fight with the girl’s fear of the night. Dozens of signatures and supportive little notes were collected, a lot of noise was made, a march was organised and speeches were given! Aren’t you tired of The Fear deciding that He’s in charge? Wouldn’t you agree that children deserve a good night’s rest? Our thoughts exactly!

This workshop illustrates a creative way in which to combine the principles of NVR with a narrative approach in therapeutic work with anxious children and their families. It tells a story of movement, connectivity & hope in a situation that for an instant may have seemed hopeless. The workshop is constructed like a kaleidoscope, with storytelling alternated by theoretical insights, fragments of actual letters, and pictures and video clips shot during the process.

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Workshop 25, 26/5 16:30-17:45

Elizabeth Miedema, child and adolescent psychiater, Freddy van der Veen, manager child and adolescent unit Kinnik – Netherlands

Non-Violent Resistance in Fryslân (The Netherlands) - How NVR (non-violent resistance) assists in reducing forced interventions on an acute psychiatric unit specialized for children and adolescents.

Aim: The goal of this presentation is to gain knowledge about how NVR changes the social climate on an acute psychiatric unit for children and adolescents. This presentation will demonstrate how staff and group workers are able to give extra direction to these clients without using constraint interventions like fixation, forced medication and/or separation. Recent data will be shown on how radically NVR reduces the number of forced interventions. It demonstrates that a team is able to work together in difficult situations and is able to continue on and not to give in by using constraint measures. NVR promotes the approach by standing next to (aggressive) young patients demonstrating, often, unacceptable behavior and collaborate with them and their parents.

Method: During this power point presentation we want to illustrate in an interactive way how the NVR methodology was introduced on this unit. We want to share some of our team experiences, but also those of the clients and their families, and the positive effect NVR has on all of us. Video material is used to supplement the NVR method .

This is ‘how we do NVR’ in Fryslân (Leeuwarden, the capital city of the province of Friesland, the Netherlands) and we are proud to see that since our start with NVR we have been able to inspire other institutions in Fryslân with it’s accomplishment. We strongly believe that the NVR method will not only work for residential settings for children and adolescents but also on adult units where teams are confronted with aggressive and unacceptable behavior. We have made the first steps to inspire them.