Dear Reader,
The year is drawing to a close and we are pleased to be sending to you the last issue of this subscription series. We hope that this year’s reading has stretched and engaged your thinking and assisted in your practice.
To refresh your memory, the first issue of this year focused on the theme ‘New Voices’, the second on ‘Experience Consultants’ and the third on ‘Eating Issues, Transgender Journeys and Narrative Practice’.
Due to requests from readers this issue focuses on ‘Children & young people: Dreams, Responses and Dilemmas’. The first paper, by Angel Yuen, proposes the development of a ‘response-based narrative practice’ to assist children who have been subjected to trauma. The second, by Milan Colic, describes the use of narrative practices to explore the meaning of the dreams being experienced by a young person with whom he was working. And the third, by Jodi Aman, conveys ways in which narrative approaches can assist in linking families together when children/young people are going through difficult times.
Two papers on the theme of ‘Eating issues’ then follow. Ali Borden describes the work of the Eating Disorder Centre of California. She conveys how narrative ideas can be used within a treatment centre to provide opportunities for the renegotiation of identity in group settings. Cari Corbet-Owen then provides a brief ‘exposé of body-worry’.
The final section focuses on ‘Sharing dilemmas of practice’. This is a new section of the journal which we are pleased to introduce. Here, practitioners write about dilemmas they have encountered in their work and how they have tried to respond to these. These are not seamless descriptions of ‘perfect’ practice, but instead honest reflections on the realities of complex conversations. In future issues we wish to regularly publish writings from practitioners who have perhaps stumbled, or struggled with some aspect of practice and then found ways of responding to these circumstances. Both ‘sharings of dilemmas’ in this issue relate to work with men who have been violent and/or abusive. We are pleased to include the writings of Chris Chapman from Canada, and David Newman from Australia.
The papers in this journal originate from Canada, Australia, USA, South Africa. Over the course of this year we have also published papers from Bangladesh, UK, Norway, Vietnam/Australia, Israel, Rwanda and the Palestinian Territories. In 2008 we hope to continue to publish papers from a diversity of contexts.
Your feedback on previous issues
Throughout the year we have been receiving feedback from readers on the different papers that we have published. Recently, for instance, we have received wide-ranging positive feedback on the paper ‘Stories about home’ (2007 #2) by Leonie Simmons about her experiences of being born in Vietnam and being adopted to Australia. This paper is now being circulated amongst organizations and groups working in the field of inter-country and cross-cultural adoption. Due to the feedback we are receiving, we are now working on a DVD version of this paper! We hope this will be available in the first half of 2008.
We very much appreciate hearing from readers with your views, feedback, suggestions and/or critiques of papers that we publish in these journals.
We hope that the new year treats you kindly.
Thank you for subscribing during 2007. We look forward to corresponding with you again in 2008!
Warm regards,
Cheryl White
