The Connections in Practice conference in Stirling on 15th March 2000 was organised by AFT Scotland and the Scottish Executive to focus particularly on applying Family Therapy ideas for Social Work. People had a good time and left with this handout of suggestions for what they might consider doing when they returned to their work settings.

Ideas For What You Can Do Next?

1. Mull It Over

• Mull over what you've got from the conference until you decide what's worth doing more with. Or be more active, think and talk with your colleagues.
• Maybe today simply affirms that you're already doing a lot of good systemic practice.

2. Try It!

• Right away, you could try out something new you heard about today. OK, it can be difficult to do much, and more training and experience would help, but you can
• Have a go at a genogram, or
• Take a break during a session tomorrow, or
• Think a bit more than usual about the family and systems around your client, or
• Ask new kinds of questions. Then
• Try it again.

3. Reading

If you're interested in reading more, try these for a start:

• Carpenter J and Treacher A (1989) Problems and Solutions in Marital and Family Therapy. Blackwell:Oxford
• Carpenter J and Treacher A (1993) Using Family Therapy in the 1990s. Blackwell:Oxford
• Reimers S and Treacher A (1995) Introducing User-Friendly Family Therapy. Routledge
• Jones E (1993) Family Systems Therapy. Wiley:Chichester
• Burck C and Speed B (1995) (eds) Gender, Power and Relationships. Routledge:London
• O'Connell B (1998) Solution Focused Therapy. Sage
• Other material from the conference and related issues can be found on this web-page:<www.forallthat.com> (yes, as in Robert Burns!)

4. Interest Groups

• Talk to local colleagues. Especially if they've been to the conference, keep in contact, meet up in or out of work hours occasionally - the pub is definitely the best setting!
• If you come up with better ideas, let us know too, please!
• If you can actually share work, even sit in on each other's sessions, you're on your way!

5. Join Up

• By being at the conference, you are on our mailing list for AFT Scotland.
• There are active FT or Brief Therapy local interest groups in some areas too.
• Especially if you are on the internet, there will be contact from our proposed Systemic Practice Network coordinated by Nick Child. Buy, borrow, or cyber-cafe yourself an email address, then contact him with it - email: nick.child@virgin.net.
• Subscribe to AFT's magazine, Context, or join AFT itself - contact: Helen Lavis, c/o Blackwells at 01865-382378 - and get the Journal of Family Therapy too.

6. More Training

• Take the information about other organisations active in Scotland and the UK. For example, the Scottish Institute of Human Relations Family Therapy Project's training and other events (phone: 0141-332-0011), the Brief Therapy Practice (phone:020-8968-0070) and Insyt (Peter Robinson at: peter.m.robinson@insyt.org)

nick.child@virgin.net