Advanced Training
Applied and advanced training for professionals interested in key practice areas,
integrative practice, live supervision and systemic masterclasses.
Workshops:
Picture This: Harnessing the Therapeutic Power of Genograms (1 day)
Systems and Stories: A Narrative Therapy Approach to Meaning Making and Change (2 days)
Advanced Systemic Practice: Integrating Approaches for Tailored Interventions (1 day)
Advanced Systemic Practice: Getting Unstuck and Maximizing Maneuverability (1 day)
Live Supervision: Enhancing Systemic Family Therapy Practice (2 days)
Picture This: Harnessing the Therapeutic Power of Genograms
This workshop will open up the enormous possibilities and potential of the genogram as a process for both assessment, and intervention. Widely used by family therapists and all health care professionals, the genogram is a graphic way of organising the mass of information gathered during a family assessment and finding patterns in the family system for more targeted treatment.
Yet many practitioners commonly complete a very basic genogram and file it away, never to be looked at again by them (or their client). This is a major loss especially with complex cases. Done correctly a genogram interview is a powerful assessment tool giving you more detailed understanding of case presentations and how to plan targeted interventions.
To understand what it is that brings a person to seek help, it's essential to consider how each person is inextricably interwoven within broader interactional and contextual systems, the most fundamental of which is family. Family is a principle influence in shaping who a person is, how they relate to others, and how they react or respond to life's predictable stages and changes (e.g., marriage, starting a family, teenage years, aging parents), as well as unplanned challenges (e.g., divorce, remarriage, infertility, untimely death, trauma). This is an important consideration regardless of the family structure people come from, but especially so if clients have an experience of removal from their biological family to foster, kinship or residential care.
Family diagrams (or genograms) provide a picture of who a person is, where they come from, who matters in their life, and how they belong in the world; as well as providing a framework for understanding present stressors, past struggles and strengths and resources. It goes beyond a traditional family tree allowing practitioners to visualise patterns and psychological factors that affect relationships. This "picture" representation of a client's family context enables practitioners to organise and hold in mind the complexity of a client's context (family history, patterns, events) and their strengths in order to collaboratively identify pathways to healing and promote recovery. Genograms provide a rich and powerful tool for engagement, enhancing the therapeutic alliance, assessment, treatment planning, and can be used as a therapeutic intervention in itself.
By completion of this workshop participants will have highly effective tools that can be used with all clients and their families/carers/other professionals involved.
The Workshop will include the following areas:
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The place of genogram work within Systemic Family Therapy
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Core systemic concepts related to genogram work
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How to create a genogram and graphically organise information gathered in an assessment session
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How to conduct a genogram interview and how to share the genogram with your client
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Tracking family patterns through time and space
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Interpreting and working with family structure
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Assessing family patterns and functioning, including relational patterns and triangles
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Consideration of the Family Life Cycle
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Mental Health implications
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A Strengths based approach to genograms
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Using genograms as assessment, to plan intervention and as an intervention
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Creative approaches to creating and working with genograms
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Genograms for Young People in Out of Home Care
To arrange this workshop for your organisation, please contact Dr Leonie White at drleoniewhite@gmail.com or 0401002544
To attend a public event, please search the Compass Seminars Australia website at
https://www.compassaustralia.com.au/genogram-training-and-family-genogram-symbols-training
Systems and Stories: A Narrative Therapy Approach to Meaning Making and Change
This two-day workshop will provide participants with key skills in Narrative Practice including practical clinical skills that can be used immediately with individuals and families (children, adolescents, adults and older persons). Participants will consider the relevance of Narrative Practice in their work setting, and applications relating to the context of trauma, relationships, and grief and loss. Participants will gain an understanding of the role of neuroscience in enhancing narrative practice and consider how to “tread lightly” but effectively with Narrative Practice.
In this course participants will develop an understanding of:
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What Narrative Therapy is
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The Systemic Family Therapy context of Narrative Therapy
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Assumptions and systemic concepts underpinning Narrative Practice
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The importance of stories in our own lives and the lives of those we work with
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Therapist positioning in Narrative Therapy
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How applications of neuroscience can boost narrative practices and thicken preferred identities
Participants will develop skills in:
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Deconstruction
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Externalising Conversations
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Reauthoring conversations, including
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Absent but Implicit Conversations
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Unique Outcomes Conversations
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Thickening alternative storylines to amplify change, including
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Remembering conversations
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Outsider witnessing
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Therapeutic documents
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Working with the Landscape of Action and Landscape of Identity.
To arrange this workshop for your organisation, please contact Dr Leonie White at drleoniewhite@gmail.com or 0401002544
To attend a public event, please search the Compass Seminars Australia website at
https://www.compassaustralia.com.au/narrative-therapy-training-and-course
Advanced Systemic Practice: Integrating Approaches for Tailored Interventions
Expect an interactive, dynamic, experiential, and self-reflective learning environment that strengthens both conceptual understanding and practical application.
This one-day workshop is a masterclass designed for practitioners working with children, young people, adults, couples, families, stakeholder groups, and organisations in counselling, mental health, or community services. It is particularly suited to those who provide family therapy or who work systemically with teams, stakeholders or organisations and are looking for a structured framework to thoughtfully and intentionally integrate therapeutic knowledges and approaches in service of the client.
This advanced and applied training is for participants with prior systemic family therapy training and experience. The workshop begins with a review of family therapy as a framework for practice, revisiting core systemic concepts and change processes. From this shared foundation, participants will then learn a Systemic Meta-Framework for Integrative Practice, a process map designed to guide clinicians in intentional decision-making and the delivery of individualised interventions tailored to the client’s unique circumstances and needs.
The process map walks participants through key foundational elements, including:
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Way of being in therapeutic practice
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Therapeutic alliance, incorporating ideas from neuroscience, dyadic developmental psychotherapy, and mentalization
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Systemic assessment and formulation, including collaborative sharing of hypotheses with clients
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Decision-making processes for selecting and integrating interventions
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Delivery of intentional, individualised intervention packages
This workshop links theory and practice through applied clinical discussions, as participants put systemic thinking and the model of integrative practice into action in structured consultation sessions.
Please note: This workshop can be booked as standalone workshops or booked together with "Advanced Systemic Practice: Getting Unstuck and Maximizing Maneuverability" for an immersive experience.
To arrange this workshop for your organisation, please contact Dr Leonie White at drleoniewhite@gmail.com or 0401002544
Advanced Systemic Practice: Getting Unstuck and Maximizing Maneuverability
Are you ready to elevate your systemic practice to the next level?
This one-day masterclass workshop is designed for experienced practitioners working with children, young people, adults, couples, families, stakeholder groups, and organizations in counselling, mental health, or community services. If you’ve ever felt “stuck” in your work, this workshop offers fresh strategies to reignite your thinking and broaden your clinical toolkit.
Geared toward those with systemic family therapy training, this advanced and applied training explores how to adopt a “helicopter view” to gain clarity, enhance flexibility, and maximize maneuverability in practice. We’ll privilege multiple positions and integrate insights from systems thinking, psychodynamic approaches, neurolinguistic programming, and various schools of family therapy to help you develop intentional, individualized interventions that align with clients’ unique circumstances and readiness for change.
Participants will learn to:
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Maintain flexibility and adaptability to address shifting challenges.
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Take purposeful, intentional action in the face of obstacles and “stuckness”.
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Keep therapeutic options open to create meaningful contexts for change.
This workshop is dynamic, interactive, and experiential, blending theory with practice. Through structured consultations and applied clinical discussions, you’ll put systemic thinking and maneuverability into action, honing your ability to navigate even the most complex therapeutic landscapes with confidence and creativity.
Join me for an engaging day of professional growth that will leave you equipped to approach your work with renewed energy and expanded possibilities!
Please note: This workshop can be booked as standalone workshops or booked together with "Advanced Systemic Practice: Integrating Approaches for Tailored Interventions" for an immersive experience.
To arrange this workshop for your organisation, please contact Dr Leonie White at drleoniewhite@gmail.com or 0401002544
Live Supervision: Enhancing Systemic Family Therapy Practice (2 days)
This two-day workshop is for participants who have completed family therapy training (minimum of foundational training e.g., Key Skills in Family Therapy) who would like to hone their family therapy knowledge and skills through the experience of live supervision of clinical practice. The workshop will involve a review and refresh of systemic family therapy, an orientation to live supervision using the one-way mirror and team based interventions, and the experience of live supervision.
This workshop will cover:
Day 1: Education and Team Set Up
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Systemic family therapy review and refresh
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Systemic thinking
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Family Therapy approaches
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Integrative practice
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Introduction to systemic consultation model
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Case consultation linking reviewed theory to practice
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Orientation to Live Supervision
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Nature and purpose of the one-way mirror
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Evolution over time of the use of the mirror
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Two interventions from across family therapy generations and indicators for use: Reflective Teams & Messages
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Develop familiarity and comfort with the mirror and team-based work
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Day 2: Live Supervision
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Questions, curiosities and reflections from Day 1
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Two live supervision sessions of clinical practice. Each live supervision consists of three stages to enhance learning for all participants
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Pre-planning
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Client Session
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De-brief
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Application of learning activity
The workshop is interactive, dynamic, experiential, and self-reflective to enhance participant's experience and learning oucomes.
To arrange this workshop for your organisation, please contact Dr Leonie White at drleoniewhite@gmail.com or 0401002544