How does UKASFP support and promote Solution Focused Practice?

UKASFP promotes Solution Focused practice wherever it can support people to flourish more fully in their lives. The Solution Focused approach has its own distinctive character and where therapists, coaches, consultants or human services professionals work within the Solution Focused framework we are happy for them to describe their practice as 'Solution Focused' and refer to UKASFP web resources at https://ukasfp.site-ym.com/page/UKASFP

UKASFP is not a regulatory body but rather is a community of dedicated practitioners promoting a standard of practice for the best applications of solution focused practice in a consistent and recognisable way. This allows for a clear explanation of what is on offer to clients and the wider world. It is also key to building the evidence base for its effectiveness (see below), given the wide and growing range of applications of Solution Focused Practice. 

When can practice be described as ‘Solution Focused’?

For an individual practitioner’s approach to be known as 'Solution Focused' it will be built around a common core of ideas, developed by Steve de Shazar, Insoo Kim Berg and their close colleagues in the 1980’s. While Solution Focused Practice has continued to develop over the subsequent years (see e.g. McKergow, 2016) it remains largely consistent with principles originally established by De Shazer and Berg.

Principles of Solution Focused Practice

While various authors describe Solution Focused Practice in their own language, the following provides a summary framework for practitioners of Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Coaching, and Consulting:

The client is the expert: The client is the expert on their life, defining their own best hopes from the session. From this starting point the Solution Focused practitioner works with the client to co-construct the solution-finding conversation, staying on the surface and facilitating the client’s learning and growth.

The solution is not always directly related to the problem: Before Solution Focused Brief Therapy was developed existing models assumed that the solution was buried in the problem, making it necessary to take a deep dive into the problem, to describe and analyse it in great detail in order to assist the client. De Shazer’s discovery was that a client’s solutions can be unique to their situation and not connected to the problem they’re facing. As the only one who knows the link the client is the expert on their life – the therapist is not able to advise. The client simply does not yet know the solution; it is the role of the therapist to elicit best hopes, detailed description of a preferred future, strengths and resources that will help facilitate their finding of these solutions. The Solution Focused Practitioner would not conduct a problem analysis or diagnosis.

If a problem doesn’t seem to have a solution, it isn’t a problem it’s just part of the landscape: Focus on a place where change can happen instead, because then you don’t have dig alone you can build solutions together.

Look for exceptions: Problems are never perfect, they have always got cracks in them. These imperfections are exceptions, clues to solutions being times when the client’s best hope was already in action and the problem is absent or less prevaent. Looking for and finding exceptions provides the client with clues to what they were doing differently – their solutions.

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it: Stay on the surface, stay with the client’s best hopes rather than bothering with theories, models and philosophies of action which are not relevant or useful when the client already possesses their solutions to their problem. Be non-judgemental; what the client sees as a solution or part of a solution leads to their best hope. it’s theirs and it’s good enough.

If something works, do more of it: If something works, in the way that an exception does, which the client finds useful, notice it, reflect it back and built it out by asking for a detailed description.

If something doesn’t work, do something else: Follow your curiosity to co-construct new possibilities of a better future with the client to avoid repeating the same thoughts, behaviours or actions that led to them getting stuck. Doing something different is likely to create the change the client is hoping for.

The client’s description of their future when the problem has been replaced by its solution creates a new experience of success, competence and self-directed change: Describing their world with the solutions in place and the problem gone creates a picture of the best hope in action. Asking what the client would notice about their strengths and resources and what others would notice as they move through their ‘day after’ lays down new memories they can refer to after the session. 

For a further description and discussion see the article What exactly is ‘Solution Focused’ anyway?

Is Solution Focused Practice evidence-based?

There is now a strong evidence base for the effectiveness of Solution Focused Practice across a wide range of contexts and applications.

• Is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Evidence-Based? An Update 10 Years Later (Kim, Smock Jordan, Franklin, Froerer, 2019)

   

• SF Research List - EBTA The European Brief Therapy Association reports that as of February, they are able to list 677 papers published since 1975, 540 empirical studies, 48 reviews, including 34 systematic reviews, 16 of them being meta-analyses, and 89 theoretical papers.