A one day conference offered by the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies - "Working in a Multicultural Context: Implications for Systemic Practice"

2nd November 2007

Keynote speakers: Dr. Nancy Boyd Franklin, Professor, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA; Dr. Anderson J Franklin, Chair / Distinguished Professorship, Boston College; and Dr. Agnes Bryan, Senior Clinical Lecturer, Tavistock Clinic and Adult Psychotherapist, Private Practice.

The purpose of this conference, aimed at mental health professionals, is to create a safe space where participants can explore the challenges of intercultural and intra-cultural work from a range of perspectives.  The conference will address some of the questions raised through the processes of living and working in our multicultural society:

• How do we position ourselves within the contexts of discrimination and powerlessness that constitute the  worlds inhabited by our clients?
• How do we understand the role of faith in our clients’ belief systems, especially if they are different from our own? 
• How do we collaborate with interpreters and bi-cultural workers?
• In which instances do we think that cultural sensitivity is the most important consideration, and when do we privilege the safety of the child or family as the highest context marker?

In addition to the keynote presentations there will be a range of workshops througout the day and you will have the opportunity to attend two workshops (one in the morning and one in the afternoon). Some of the workshop presenters from the family therapy field include Charlotte Burck, Hitesh Raval, Phillip Messent, Jocelyn Avigad, Lorraine Davies-Smith. Gillian Evans, the author of the book 'Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain' will talk about her book in a workshop organised by the book club at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies.

Over a long lunch break, we will create a space for participants to network and exchange ideas around issues they particularly want to focus on.  We will offer lunchtime workshops for interested participants.

Refreshments and lunch will be provided for all participants.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO BOOK A PLACE PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.instituteoffamilytherapy.org.uk OR CONTACT THE TRAINING DEPARTMENT.

TEL: 020 7391 9150. E-MAIL: [email protected] 

Comments

[frodo the fearful]

you're a multicultural institute - what's your take on this piece i found
on the web. Looks like a very mature analysis of a potentially explosive situation to me - found your site via google

so what do the experts think about what should be done then?

will you stray into the political domain at your conference?

what can be done in such a kaleidoscopically complex situation?

excerpt:

If we ask "what is to be done?" the answer is: many different things in different places. We must be foxes, not hedgehogs, to recall Isaiah Berlin's famous use of a fragment of Archilochus: "The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Against the strident hedgehogs of Fox News we must continue to insist that this is not all just one big War on Terror, to be won by the Good Guys eliminating the Bad Guys.

and

Ultimately, this is a challenge as much for European societies as for European governments. Much of the discrimination in France, for example, is the result of decisions by individual employers, who are going against the grain of public policy and the law of the land. It's the personal attitudes and behavior of hundreds of millions of non-Muslim Europeans, in countless small, everyday interactions, that will determine whether their Muslim fellow citizens begin to feel at home in Europe or not. Together, of course, with the personal choices of millions of individual Muslims, and the example given by their spiritual and political leaders.

Is it likely that Europeans will rise to this challenge? I fear not. Is it still possible? Yes. But it's already five minutes to midnight—and we are drinking in the last chance saloon.

full text at:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19371

frodo the fearful

[Term papers]

Many Congrats to you May you have that as u want, Wish you a best of luck.