General
• uses languaging to bring forward people’s resources
• out of narrative therapy tradition
• addresses use of clinician knowledge and power
• rich resource for core mental health work

Johnella Bird has developed a collaboratively oriented resource based therapy out of the Narrative Therapy tradition. This focuses on the thoughtful use of language in order to bring forward people’s sense of agency, knowledge and resources. This work is particularly rich as a resource for mental health work. Johnella Bird’s work is particularly flexible, it does not comprise a structured method or technique of inquiry (Lowe 2005) but implementation of principles and attitudinal orientation which can be incorporated into a wide range of conversations, including the core activities of mental health work. While her approach prioritises collaboration and resources of the person seeking consultation it also acknowledges the importance of clinician knowledge, resources and therapeutic skills. Inquiry is thoughtful - informed by the inquirer’s skills, knowledge and experience, rather than from a 'not-knowing' position. There is no attempt to conceal the inequality of the power relation - specific strategies are discussed to engage the power relation and contextual environment in the service of bringing forward the agency, knowledge and resources of the person.

The Johnella Bird website outlines Johnella’s books, (Bird 2000) (Bird 2004) (Bird 2006), CD’s and teaching schedule. In the paragraphs below the authors offer snippets of the therapeutic skills we have learned from Johnella Bird as we have found them useful in our mental health work. This is a work in progress in terms of our learning and is offered as a resource to the reader to raise possibilities and interest the reader in accessing Johnella Bird’s work and teaching toward developing their own skills. We have attempted to represent much of this in our own words but have drawn heavily on Johnella Bird’s ideas, both from her books and words in teaching and supervision. To avoid impeding flow we have not acknowledged this repeatedly through the text.

There are no case studies cited here because of privacy and confidentiality issues. A number of clinical examples are cited, but with very little specific information and what is there is slightly changed, or a single example presented as a combination of aspects of two or more.

Attitude and orientation
• focus on agency and resource
• focused towards person experiencing movement
• continuous, subtle alteration in the pattern of talk
• felt rather than heard

Every moment of every conversation can be carefully focused towards the person experiencing movement. This is movement in the direction of increased experience of their own agency, knowledge and resourcefulness and possibility moving into the next steps towards the change they desire. It is this attention to fine detail of the language, form and process of a conversation which enables the incorporation of this approach into the core activities of mental health work, such as screening for mental disorders, assessment and management of risk, development of formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans, medication reviews and implementation of compulsory treatment. It involves continuous, subtle alteration in the pattern of talk which arises from the context we work in (in terms of wider societal expectations and patterns of conversation), expectations of those who come to see us and many aspects of our training which put us in the expert position, looking for pathology for which we recommend remedies.

Of course, to achieve such alteration throughout all our conversations is not an achievable goal. The motivation for the authors in making these ideas available on this website is that we have found, that even as we included some of these ideas, sometimes in our conversations, imperfectly, our usefulness to the people who consult us has increased noticeably. As yet there are no formal trials on this approach. We do not have the resources to do an intervention trial but would willingly support such an initiative, ideally a randomized controlled trial.

Like the perfect golf swing or tennis shot, the work has a deceptive simplicity and lack of apparent effort when well executed, a difference from other conversation which is 'felt rather than heard'. It comprises an attitude, orientation and subtleties of language construction which can result in a number of interventions in one sentence, as the strength of any one point in a kete (a traditional Maori basket) is dependent on the interweaving of all the threads. This subtlety and complexity makes it difficult to describe. To describe any one aspect without the others is as meaningless as one strand from a woven kete is formless. It is also what makes it so useful for mental health work. The strands are highly flexible and can be woven into any conversation. As they weave through the conversation, even when only some of them are used, some of the time, the effect on the whole conversation and the effect for the person can be significantly altered. Because we could think of no better way of doing it we have divided the following account into chunks and headings as if we were addressing only one aspect at a time but there is inevitable interweaving and overlap and repetition.