Collective narrative supervision practices that connect family violence workers to inter-generational solidarity, resilience and resistance during hard times.
Ada Conroy, Masters of Narrative Therapy & Community Work Thesis, 2024.
“How can I belong therapists within a community of others who work in accord with our collective ethics, embrace a spirit of solidarity and see our collective work as justice-doing?” Vikki Reynolds, 2011, p 4
“Identity formations and social actions are not separate. Convening definitional ceremonies around, and in relation to, various initiatives of social action that people are taking can powerfully influence not only these people’s self- definition, but also their ability to continue to take action.” David Denborough, 2008, p 66
My context
When I was 22, I in a worked at a Centre Against Sexual Assault alongside a woman named Jill Duncan. Jill was an older woman who took me under her wing. She once said to me “I am so glad you’re here Ada, because I am tired, and I need to pass the baton”. She generated in me a sense of a lineage, that I was part of a movement of feminism and gender-based violence activists who valued and needed each other to ensure we not only achieve our objectives but are sustained within the work. I haven’t heard from Jill since she moved up north in retirement ten years ago, but I think of her often and acknowledge that I am changed for knowing her.
When I was 39, I was contacted by a young woman named Christa Winkels who asked me to mentor her. She told me that she had attended one of my trainings, and it suddenly became very clear to her that she wanted to be a family violence worker. She asked me to help her, to take her under my wing. Even though I was in a full-time job and hadn’t thought about offering supervision or mentoring, I said yes, and she became my first clinical supervision client. We worked together for several years, until she went on parental leave. We are still in contact and continue to support each other in the work. I am now a full-time clinical supervisor for family violence specialists.
I dedicate this essay to Jill, and hope that I have done her proud. I also dedicate it to Christa, who in finding her path, helped me find interesting diversions along mine. I can draw a straight line from Jill to Christa and a beautifully curly one. We are multi-generational - may we stay connected to each other and our shared histories.
I’m 47 now, and as I write this, I reflect on my 25 years in the family violence workforce. I acknowledge that I have swiftly transformed from a hopeful young person who feels a deep and instinctive commitment to participate in the elimination of violence against women, to a hopeful middle-aged person who feels a deep and instinctive commitment to participate, and link with and support the participation of others, in the elimination of male violence against all.
I joined this workforce young, and, like many others, it was a lived and living experience that brought me here. I have always felt a part of something useful and focussing on the importance of intergenerational solidarity is important to me, and my younger self would have loved this – it would have validated what she knew, what she had to learn, and connect her to who she was learning alongside.
Solidarity with Victim-Survivors – a fundamental basis
When I was a men’s behaviour change worker, I would people-the-room (Reynolds, 2001) with victim survivors. Imaging them there, standing near the men who harmed them, or alongside me, allowed me to draw on their skills, knowledge and everyday resistance (Wade, 1997). It enhanced my accountability and reminded me to only engage in work that would uphold their safety and dignity; to not do work I wouldn’t want them observing. It’s a powerful practice skill that has sustained me through some difficult and complex work. I don’t recall where I learned this, but it is a practice skill that I share with others in all domains of my current practice – from training to supervision.
Imagine the victim survivor/s there in the room. What do you notice? What difference does this make to your practice to have them here, observing you? What does it make possible? What does it make visible? What does your solidarity with victim-survivors connect you to and why is that important?
In my practice, I have people-ed the room with victim-survivors, adults and children, who have been murdered, and this heartbreaking practice grounds me in the serious nature of the work. I am compelled to engage in safe and accountable ways on behalf of.
Identity Formation
I am interested in collective knowledge, shared values, and inter-connection for the purpose of worker sustainability. When we come together and connect on who we are, why we are here, and who are we here on behalf of, we strengthen our preferred identity and become of use. Through exploration of the absent but implicit, a process where “we make meaning of any experience by contrasting it with some other experience or set of experiences” (Freedman, 2012, p 2), we can explore our values and intentional states (White, 2007). Family violence work is not easy work but burn-out and vicarious trauma are not inevitable. In order to maintain a connection to our values and enhance workforce sustainability, I ask the following questions of myself and others:
What brought you to this work? What keeps you here?
Who will benefit from your effort? Whose efforts do you benefit from?
These questions can ground us in our lineage and collective values and identities and remind us that we are a part of a movement that existed before we got here and will carry on without us. This practice is one that contributes to a multi-storied sense of
identity.
I hold two beliefs about family violence work:
We don’t end up here by accident. We choose to become a part of a movement, and we owe it to those who came before us, and those who we will pass the baton to, to honor their efforts and join with them in the fight.
Everything we know, we learned it from victim-survivors. And we enact this learning according to our values, hopes, skills and knowledges. As family violence workers, we must resist positioning ourselves as ‘expert’, no matter how long we’ve been doing this work.
Increasingly, I have observed family violence workers feeling isolated, exhausted, disheartened and at a loss. They present their problems about long waitlists, very limited safe and affordable housing, police violence, poor service responses. They present problems about the workplace, such as lateral and vertical abuse, siloed service systems and harmful colonial practices.
In resisting individualising and pathologising these problem stories, we can seeinstead to re-member why we are here. Reynolds, in her important article ‘Resisting Burnout Through Justice Doing’ (2011), states that “when we enact justice-doing in our work, we are not in new territory, but we are weaving ourselves into these rich and diverse histories; although these stories are not always told, taught or honored” (Reynolds, 2011, p 29). In remembering this, we remember that we are interconnected, and our individual work is one part of a much larger movement.
I agree that gathering these collective stories and enabling contribution will achieve the three key goals outlined in Denborough (p 58, 2008)
The workers will feel/think differently about themselves
The workers will feel/think differently about each other
The workers will have a different sense of themselves as a group, as a collective.
I will add a fourth, as my hope is that it will enhance sustainability, and keep these primary co-researchers and their skills, knowledges and intergenerational resiliences in the family violence workforce.
As a supervisor, narrative practices offer me the opportunity to work with ‘colleagues seeking help’ (Simmonds, 2010, p 19) to strengthen the values and inter-generational commitment of the family violence workforce. In particular, I want to share some of the ways I have used collective documents and re-membering practices in my work over the past year. White (2007) states that “re-membering conversations are not about passive recollection but about purposive reengagements with the history of one's relationships with significant figures and with the identities of one's present life and projected future” (p 129). There are three spheres of practice where I have used the rich description generated by re-membering conversations to develop collective documents and respond to problems faced by family violence workers in their workplaces:
In a workshop
In group reflective practice
In individual supervision
This past year, I have been using these questions (below), developed by David Denborough (2008) to gather material for collective documents, in my roles as a
facilitator of group and individual supervision, communities of practice and workshops:
What is the name of a special skill, knowledge or value that sustains you through difficult times?
What is a story about this skill, knowledge or value: a story about a time when this made a difference to you or to others?
What is the history of this skill, knowledge or value: how did you learn this? Who did you learn it from?
Is this skill or value linked in some way to collective traditions (familial/ community) and/or cultural traditions?
I ask these questions across my contexts to generate a sense of connectedness to ourselves, our histories, our communities.
Using Collective Documents to Respond to Problem Stories: Workshop
The first time I facilitated a session with these questions was during a training in August 2023, where I was asked to develop and deliver on feminist workplace culture for a small, standalone feminist service responding to structural and interpersonal violence against women and non-binary people. The service had contacted me as they were attempting to respond to a cultural problem. They had lost a number of staff recentland needed to rebuild the culture according to their collective values, to ground themselves and orient new staff.
This was a significant request for me as a practitioner, as I had worked at this service 15 years ago. So not only was I familiar with the history, frameworks and politics of this service, this service and I had a shared history. It was wonderful to be invited back in, in this capacity to support a new generation of feminist workers.
In his article, Rescuing the Said from the Saying of it (2008), Newman states that “so much of people’s initiatives – and accounts of these – can be lost through ‘perishing occasions’, or can simply ‘fly by’, and not be taken up into the accounts of people’s lives.” (Newman, 2008, p 26). Whilst I wasn’t asked to rescue their words or develop a narrative document, the opportunity to capture their local knowledge, initiatives and accounts was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, especially when I took my own lineage into consideration.
At the beginning of the session, I asked them to write down 3 values that keep them in the work, not to share them with anyone, just document them and keep them visible during the session. Later, I introduced the questions above, invited them to draw on the values they had documented earlier, and placed in them in pairs. When they returned, I opened the floor for them to share what was generated from their discussion.
One participant shared a story that was both moving and memorable. She told us that her special value was Patience. She learned it from someone named Melissa, who she worked with at a café many years ago. Melissa was a barista and taught this person to make coffee. She told us that Melissa’s patience with her helped her to learn, as it created space to make mistakes and take the time required to figure out the best way forward. She told us that she hadn’t thought about Melissa for many years. I asked her:
Would it surprise Melissa to know that she had such an effect on you? What might she tell us about you if she were here?
What might she tell us about what she learned from you?
What difference does it make to you today that Melissa is here with us?
What difference does it make to others to hear about Melissa’s influence on their colleague?
During this session, I captured words and reflections and developed a collective document that made visible shared skills, values, hopes and preferred stories of the team.
We are CARA. We come together through shared values and commitments. Collectively, we are working towards a deeper understanding of intersectional feminist ways of knowing, being and doing.
In August 2023, we spent some time exploring our workplace culture, our capabilities, our co-creations, and collective ethics. Our shared experiences at a point in time. We discussed what it would mean to build a workplace culture of hope, resilience, activism and raising ideas to progress change. Here are our collective reflections.
The skills we have to build an intersectional feminist workplace culture at CARA
We model it. We are always learning, particularly from each other. We have an open door. We are building an approachable and judgment free space. We continue to educate ourselves. Keep reading, doing trainings, chatting about it.
Useful in advocacy with other workers to be able to articulate. Demonstrating inclusivity, genuine kindness, being non-judgemental, supportive, encouraging, connected, honest.
We believe it’s important to model transparency and openness from the top down to create an openness where people can be vulnerable.
We commit to observing and being open to learning about each other’s experiences and specialities within our work, to recognise the diversity in the workplace. We apply our knowledge of intersectional feminist values and how inequalities experienced by people intersect and impact their circumstances, and we consider how this applies to people experiencing homelessness. We ask ourselves and each other how we work to promote the intersectional feminist values of CARA and integrate these lessons in our day to day practice.
Over the next year, our individual work practice will progress intersectional feminist ways of working at CARA
Be patient. Listen and learn to deepen our understanding.
We will respect diverse identities, make visible power structures and hierarchies, and mitigate their dominance where possible.
We hope to bring in a more strategic, less reactive way of doing and being in the work. Our hope is this could be helpful as its important people have the time and space to pause before they figure out what ethics they want to enact.
We will remain curious and not make assumptions about each other. We will actively invite contribution so people feel like they can share their unique ideas, instead of group think. Previously it was encouraged that the team explored and addressed issues together. We want to build this into our culture. Not hierarchical but across the organisation. We feel that it could be useful to include this in our reflective practice.
Through meetings and conversations, we will begin the development of a service delivery manual that will reflect the intersectional feminist values at CARA. We will observe the procedures within each stage of service delivery, and other relevant practices. These will be applied in writing using appropriate terms and language that reflects CARA’s feminist, intersectional, and trauma & violence informed practice.
Believed-in-Hopes to strengthen our work in teams to better reflect intersectional feminist understandings of teamwork
Talk about it more. Learn from each other. Share ideas. Collaborate.
We would love to see more BIPoC and QTIPoC people on our board, in leadership, in the case management teams. We believe representation is key here and we are greatly lacking it.
We want to broaden out the reference group and membership structure so that it includes more diverse voices of living and learned experience.
Our work will be improved through open discussions between team members, seeking their perspectives and suggestions about how to improve practice.
This would involve the ability to suggest and make comments regardless of power hierarchy and have the right to be listened to and respected.
We will continue developing LGBTQI+ practices to strive as an organisation which is safe for gender diverse people.
I sent the letter to the team at CARA and invited them to edit and add to the document in whatever way they wished. I received a lovely thank you in response, however no edits came. The process finished here. Whilst I would have loved to continue working with the team on establishing their collective ethics in sustainable ways, it was also lovely to be involved for even a short amount of time. As someone who has only ever worked in small, standalone feminist services like this one, I felt a great sense of solidarity and connection with the team, and don’t doubt the importance of a process like this.
Newman (2008) says the “use of documentation to link people to their networks, to have significant messages or knowledges as more enduring, to build living double- storied documents around certain themes” is useful (Newman, 2008, p 34). Had this letter not been written, the learning and commitments from this session would have faded from memory, which would not have served the clients in any way.
Using Re-Membering to Respond to Problem Stories: Group Supervision
I ran this activity again last month, with a group of practice leads in a busy family violence service in a metro region of Naarm.
I hadn’t planned on it, but when the participants checked in with how they were feeling and what they were noticing in their work, they each shared single-storied examples of the problems they facing into. They shared these stories with humour and warmth, however, the stories were missing examples of skill, knoweledges and values. I asked the participants if they would be up for some small group work where they ask each other particular questions to generate stories that connect us back with why we’re here in the first place. They all agreed so I provided them with the questions, and they went into break out rooms for 20 minutes.
When they returned, they did so with strong stories of intergenerational resilience, solidarity and resistance.
I invited them to share highlights from their discussion and left it up to them to decide which elements they would share.
Unsurprisingly, they each richly described a woman from multiple generations who had influenced them, who they here on behalf of. They were aunties, grandmothers, clients, sisters. We gathered their names and said them. I invited each participant to write the names on post it notes, and to keep them close over the next little while. To re-member each other and the people who brought us here. The people we are here on behalf of.
Beautifully, one of the participants was very new to the role, and had only recently met her colleagues. It was also the first time I had met her, and I thanked her for participating in what may have felt a vulnerable exercise.
This process “of collectively and ritually recognising each participant’s theme and history enabled an ‘invention of unity in diversity’ and the establishment of ‘communitas’, a sense of togetherness in which differences and individual distinctiveness remain visible and treasured” (Denborough, 2008, p 130). Further, it provided an opportunity to re-connect to preferred identities – their associations of life (White, 2007).
Each participant left the session stating they felt energised. It is my hope that they kept the post it notes, and we can continue to add names to them.
Using Collective Documents to Respond to Problems: Individual Supervision
I worked with Abru as a group supervision participant and then as an individual supervisee. She was a new graduate who had undertaken her final placement at the refuge where I had been supervising staff for about three years. For the past 6 months, I had been supporting the team to respond to the problems brought forth by the behaviour of their new CEO. She was engaging in what could be described as ‘vertical abuse’ (Williams Cantey, 2013). She was using tactics and behaviours that parallelled perpetrators of family violence, using power and coercion in harmful ways with significant impact on worker wellbeing and client safety. This is one part of the story.
Earlier this year, I asked Abru to draw the problem as she saw it. She drew herself tied to a tree by a river that was rapidly rising. She described this as frightening, that she was almost in over her head. Her confidence was wavering, and she felt trapped.
In time, the entire staffing group resigned, including Abru. I got in touch with Abru as I was curious about how she made meaning out of the experience. We spoke for a while, and out of our conversation, I rescued her words and wrote a letter. I asked Abru if she would appreciate the letter being shared with a family violence worker in leadership, as I believed her living, local and learned knowledge would greatly benefit others. Abru welcomed this idea, so I addressed the letter to Jac, a supervision client that I have worked with for several years.
Dear Jac,
I want to share with you some of the skills and knowledges I have that sustain me in my work and life and connect me to you and others in the family violence sector.
I graduated from my 4-year social work degree last year. When I was given the option to do my final placement at a family violence refuge, I immediately knew it was what I wanted to do. I called my best friend right away. I remember the feeling of happiness, a knowledge that this is where I wanted to be. I knew I could bring my values to this work, to be on the same level with my clients and treat
them like human beings, learn from them and share our skills and knowledges.
A special value I hold is that of softness. I learned this from my mum and sister. They know when to be soft, and when to be firm. Offering and receiving softness eases anxiety and distress and feels kind. Softness is something important to me, and an ongoing goal I have is to be a soft person for other people. And for myself.
Softness is tied to my religion, and is about dignity, how we hold ourselves as Muslim women, how we treat others. We are kind and forgiving and believe in the rights granted by God and what has been taught to us throughout life.
I also learned softness from an art teacher at school. I still see her, and sometimes we sit on her porch and drink coffee in the sunlight. It’s so beautiful and she’s so soft – I’ve never heard her raise her voice, and she’s very kind.
In my recent job, I learned a lot about power while witnessing someone use it
badly. When the new CEO started in the role, we believed that she was deserving of respect by virtue of her seniority in the organisation. I assumed she knew what she was doing, that she held the right values to mesh with the culture of the refuge. I think because of social norms about hierarchy, we gave her power, and when I started to feel afraid of her, I realised that in giving her power, I diminished my own.
She thought of me as ‘the baby’ of the organisation. She made me feel small, and this was one of the ways she took power from me. It was clear that because of my age, she didn’t respect me. She didn’t understand what I knew, what I
believed or what I had experienced in my life. Anytime you’re trying to advise someone or give an opinion, you should do that in a way that allows that person to hold onto their dignity, to allow them to make mistakes without being judged, because they’re a human being. You’re not better than them – I’d never want to make anyone feel like that.
Naming the things that matter to me gives me a solid structure of who I aspire to be, and who I want to work alongside. Human beings with a good heart need to stick together. Solidarity gives us power. We’re built to exist in community and it’s important to remember that so much can be done when we back each other up.
Even though I have left that workplace, I continue to work in a family violence service, because this is where I belong.
Jac, what are the values that keep you in this work, without which you would not be able to work? Where did you learn them?
I look forward to hearing from you. In solidarity,
Abru
I wanted to share this letter with Jac specifically, as I knew it would move her, that she would connect with Abru, and I wanted Abru and Jac to contribute to each other’s skills and knowledges, across the generations.
Jac was asked the following question by Abru in her letter:
What are the values that keep you in this work, without which you would not be able to work? Where did you learn them?
This was Jac’s response:
Jac: Good question, isn't it? Through my work with you, Ada, we've done some values mapping, and I've found that really useful. I guess what comes to mind immediately is dignity, definitely dignity, sharing power and accountability.
Ada: Do you have a story about one of those values and where you learned it from?
Jac: I learned it from making mistakes and suffering for them.
I presented the letter to Jac, and asked the following outsider witnessing (White, 2007) questions:
Identifying the expression: What caught your attention?
Describing the image: What did you learn about your Abru’s values, frameworks, intentions?
Embodying responses: What is it about your own work that accounts for why these expressions caught your attention?
Acknowledging transport/resonance: How have you been moved by this letter? How might your work be different for having been moved?
To connect the resonance with the movement, I also asked the following question:
5. Collective action: How can we transform this discussion into collective action? What do we now DO as a result of what we have learned? (Denborough, 2008)
Jac’s responses to these questions were captured, and I then generated a letter in response to Abru. Here it is:
Dear Abru,
Your letter reminded me of some very important things about myself and my work. I’m grateful that you shared your skills, knowledges and values, and am humbled to have the opportunity to respond to you.
Your special value is Softness, the value you have learned from your mum and sister and carry with you in your work and relationships. I can hear that within this value lies dignity and kindness. There’s something really strong about holding onto softness in a system with so many hard edges. I don’t always hold softness, but I want to invite it into my life more. Thank you for the reminder.
I was moved by your letter and feel very connected to the idea that this work is a calling. Whilst I am not religious, I am spiritual and I believe there is a spiritual,vocational element to this work. We don’t arrive in this sector by accident. Something important is sparked in us.
I am at a different point in my work life and I now have access to more positional power. Your letter has invited me to consider: have there been times where I have not recognised inherent worth in others? Have there been times where I have been more like your previous CEO and less like you? How can I ensure that I am working with people across different identities, different experiences? How do I make sure I recognise and work with people’s strengths to ensure that the victim- survivors accessing our service are getting the best of us?
Leaders in family violence work need to learn from those who are newer to the movement, to the work, to the ways of being. I think a lot of leaders in the family violence workforce can learn from your softness, dignity and kindness.
Abru, I hope you are now in a workplace where your worth is recognised. I wonder if I can invite you to consider: How can your recent experience be of use to victim survivors? What did you learn that will strengthen your practice? Who else can you share your values, skills and knowledges with? Whose values, skills and knoweldges can you learn from?
Thank you again for your wonderful letter. I am changed from reading it and am grateful to you.
In solidarity, Jac
Intergenerational exchange of letters enables contribution
Jac’s witnessing of Abru’s values, skills and knoweldges was an opportunity for Jac to explore the importance of softness. Jac was very moved by this, and her reflection on wanting to be like Abru and not the CEO is likely to stay with her for a long time. As Jac becomes more senior, with more and more staff reporting to her, she will be indebted to Abru for this reminder. My hope for Abru is that she now has a multi-storied experience of her first family violence job and feels inter-connected to her colleagues across the generations, and across the workforce. For them both, and for me and anyone reading this, my hope is that through this definitional ceremony “those who may initially be burdened by a sense of failure and hopelessness come to experience making contributions to the lives of others. Along the way, individuals, groups and communities can experience rich acknowledgement and a sense of renewed possibility” (Denborough, 2008, p 69).
Conclusion
Inter-generational contributions can be a powerful way to enhance sustainability in the family violence workforce. White states that we are in ‘apprenticeship without end’ (White, 2011, p28) and if we stay connected to this, to our values, to those who came before us and to those who are waiting for our baton, we find that our rooms are people- d with those invested in dignity, accountability, softness, social justice and hope – just like us. We re-member why we’re here, and who we’re here on behalf of, to not engage in work we wouldn’t want them to witness. This can keep the movement strong.
References
Denborough, D. (2008). Collective documents as a response to collective trauma in Collective Narrative Practice, pp. 26-49. Dulwich Centre Publications.
Denborough, D. (2008). Enabling contribution: Exchanging messages and convening definitional ceremonies in Collective Narrative Practice, pp. 51-70. Dulwich Centre Publications.
Denborough, D. (2008). ‘Gathering up courage’: Can narrative practice play a part in sustaining activism and human rights work? In Collective Narrative Practice, pp. 119 - 137. Dulwich Centre Publications.
Reynolds, V. (2011). Supervision of solidarity practices: Solidarity teams and people-ing- the-room in Association for Family and Systemic Therapy, UK, 4-7.
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White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
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Freedman, J. (2012). Explorations of the Absent but Implicit in International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (4), 1-10.
Williams Cantey, S. (2013) Vertical Violence and the Student Nurse: Is This Toxic for Professional Identity Development? Dissertations. 694.