Dear Reader,
It’s been just over two months since Michael White died and we would like to send our appreciation to all of you who have been in contact during this time.
We have held up the printing of this journal issue so that we include within it a special piece of writing by John Winslade and Lorraine Hedtke. John and Lorraine were present at Michael’s final workshop in San Diego. They were with Michael when he suffered a heart attack at a restaurant in the evening after this workshop, and they played significant roles in caring for friends and family from this moment until Michael died in a San Diego hospital a few days later. Their actions of care made a real difference to many people during this time. The piece included here has tried to balance family concerns in relation to privacy, with requests from many people who knew and cared about Michael who have specifically asked to know more about Michael’s last days. It is introduced with a short piece by David Epston.
In a future edition of this journal, we are planning on publishing a specially developed history of Michael White’s work and ideas. We will be developing this over the coming months.
You may have noticed that this journal edition is a little larger than usual. To compensate for the delay, we have tried to ensure that it includes a very rich diversity of thoughtful, practice-based papers.
The first of these, by Yishai Shalif and Rachel Paran, describes work they conducted in bomb shelters in Northern Israel during military conflict. It particularly focuses on creative responses to children living in traumatic circumstances.
The next section of the journal features two articles focusing on a complex area of work – responding to young men who have engaged in sexually abusive actions. Jackie Bateman and Nigel White from the UK, and Kate Hannan from Australia, describe the ways in which they use narrative practices in this context.
In the third section of the journal, Deidre Ikin conveys stories of her work with people wishing to make changes to drug and alcohol use. This paper includes a document created by a mother whose child had been removed from her care. This document, entitled, ‘The Rainbow document’, is an ‘insider’s’ guide for mothers and child protection workers to use to spark conversations in determining when conditions are right for children to return home.
The next paper to be included is by Kath Reid. Drawing on notions of ‘family as a verb’, her paper documents the work of a Queer Families project, which seeks to co-explore and richly-describe diverse meanings of ‘family’.
We would like to take the opportunity to once again thank people for their kindness and support in relation to Michael’s death. We’d also like to mention that the paper by John and Lorraine is an intimate portrayal of Michael’s last days. The authors have done their best to provide a respectful picture. We hope that offering this here will be helpful and relevant to readers. As always, we would very much welcome any responses you may have.
Warm regards,
All of us here at Dulwich Centre.
