Pavilion Publishing | Pavilion Publishing

Working with Strengths

Working with Strengths is a handbook to delivering person-centred practice and recovery. The language in health and social care is littered with references to person-centred care, person-centred planning, personalisation, self-directed support, recovery and enablement.

However, there remains a degree of confusion between service users, carers, practitioners, managers and commissioners about the practical delivery of these concepts in daily practice. A consistent theme throughout all of these concepts is the need to identify and work with people’s strengths (i.e. their abilities, capabilities, qualities, motivations, wants and aspirations).

Outside of health and social care, the Gallup Organisation has identified through decades of research that focusing on strengths is at the heart of every successful business. So, it is not something that should only impact on the thinking and working of practitioners. Working with Strengths elaborates on how we need to place strengths as the driving force for staff development, team development and organisational leadership.

Youth Self-harm and Suicide Awareness

Research shows that while staff find training courses that provide facts and figures about self-harm and suicide useful, such training does little to build their confidence when working with young people. In addition to exploring key facts and research, Youth Self-harm and Suicide Awareness seeks to recognise the importance of acknowledging attitudes and encourages workers to understand how their attitudinal stance impacts their work with young people who self-harm or feel suicidal.

The core training comprises two full-day modules: module one introduces self-harm in young people and module two expands on this learning by examining more closely working with young people who self-harm. Both modules are underpinned by a framework of reflective practice and a basic application of theories from transactional analysis.

Youth Self-harm and Suicide Awareness also includes three optional youth suicide prevention workshops, which can be run together as a full day’s training. The purpose of the workshops is to increase participants’ knowledge and understanding about youth suicide and to look at developing local youth suicide prevention guidelines and support within local areas and organisations.

Nutrition and Addiction

Addiction treatment centres in the UK combine medication, counselling and behaviour modification to tackle cravings and aid recovery, yet relapse rates remain alarmingly high. A practical, in-depth handbook, Nutrition and Addiction examines newly emerging concepts in the management of addiction. Leading researchers and experienced nutrition practitioners explore the underlying nutritional and biochemical factors involved in addictive behaviour, and the importance of nutrition in the prevention and management of addiction and its role in sustainable recovery.

Nutrition and Addiction is an up-to-date, fully referenced resource with a glossary and guide to drug terms. It is a useful guide for those with a basic understanding of nutrition, as well as for more experienced practitioners and health care professionals.

Addiction Recovery

A theoretical but highly accessible book, Addiction Recovery helps develop understanding about the philosophy of recovery, what the supporting evidence is and how workers and managers can apply this in a more recovery friendly way, as well as what they can do to assess and evidence these changes.

It will examine evidence from a number of international recovery studies and examples of successes in the UK where established recovery communities and groups, some peer projects and some services, have changed their philosophy to a recovery-oriented one.

Strength, Support, Setbacks and Solutions is a follow-up to this book Addiction Recovery