Volume 2 Issue 2-Complete

This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Article in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself.

children and young people, and using The Resilience Doughnutan Austral ian model for conceptualising resilience (Worsley, 2011).
Our interview this issue is with David Hains, a mental health nurse in Ade laide, South Australia who has pioneered the use of SFBT within the mental health Emergency Department setting. David coordinated the recent Austral ian and New Zealand Solution-Focused Conference in Adelaide, which was a successful culmination (so far) of David's Solution-Focused journey in Ade laide.
One of the key factors leading to the decision to establish this journal was the recognition of the importance of having an academic-standard, peer-re viewed journal of Solution-Focused practice. At the same time, both the mem bers of the Editorial Board and the publishers (the Board of the Australasian Association for Solution-Focused Brief Therapy) recognise that many of our readers are primarily practitioners. Thus, we seek to juggle academic and practice emphases.
In this issue, we introduce a new, occasional feature, the Forum. In this section, something published online or in a niche publication -which might raise interesting or even contentious ideas about SFBT -will be reprinted and two or three people invited to write comments. In this first Forum, Evan George has some thoughts (originally posted online) about words ... and how we should be aware ( or beware) of them. Our three invited commenters all -unfortunately-agree with Evan's thoughts but offer some interesting thoughts of their own. We hope you find this new feature useful, and we will be including other, more practice-based features in coming issues.
In Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) the question "how would you notice that the miracle has happened" is often asked. This is not at all the same as how to make the miracle happenmore like beaming ahead into the future and exploring the difference that the miracle makes in everyday life. It leads to a conversation about noticing change, rather than striving for it from scratchabout discovering that change is already happening as a precursor to building on it.
I suggest that the signs of such a change in our own practice are becoming more and more noticeable. In this paper I will outline these signs and how I think that they are showing that we are already proceeding in new directions. As such, this paper is not a call to action. I am not proposing a new form of SFBT, I am trying to give more clarity and shape to what is going on, and pro pose that it's time for us to recognise and use these developments rather than pretending that we are all still on the same page from the early 1990s. These latest versions are already in print, but they are not clearly flagged as new.
That there are different forms of SFBT under the same banner risks causing confusion among newcomers, and indeed among more experienced practi• tioners who see different ideas and methods under the same title.
As these newer versions are still unmistakeably SFBT, it would not be appropriate to seek to give them a new name. However, there is now enough difference that it would be worth making a distinction. In the manner of major new releases of software, I propose that 'SFBT 2.0' might be a working title.
In this paper I will seek to describe the differences and innovations between SFBT 2.0 and what we might call SFBT 1.0, the 'original' version. Even this is not easy to pin down in detail, following Steve de Shazer's insist ence on many occasions that 'there is no orthodoxy'. However, these distinc tions are becoming larger and increasingly important, and the field is at risk of becoming even more muddled.

SFBT 1.0
SFBT emerged gradually during the second half of the 1980s from an exten sive programme of empirical research at the Brief Family Therapy Center (BFTC), Milwaukee under the direction of Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg and colleagues. De Shazer and Berg were highly influenced by the brief ther apy approach of the Mental Research Institute (MRI), Palo Alto, and set out to develop this approach in their own centre. Indeed, MRI stalwart John Weak land remained both supervisor and close friend to Steve de Shazer until the former's death in 1995. This background is important in the way language is initially used in SFBT, as we shall see.
Through the first half of the 1980s the BFTC team developed their brief therapy ideas, with Steve de Shazer producing two books (S de $hazer, 1982, 1985) building on the idea of finding patterns and developing ideas based on Ericksonian methods (for example the 'crystal ball technique') developing interventions which could be seen as 'skeleton keys' to unlock cases. The first traces of SFBT as we know it appeared in a key 1986 paper ( de Shazer et al., 1986) and consolidated in the 1988 book Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy ( de Shazer, 1988). Gale Miller, engaged by BFTC as an observer/ researcher, spent time at the Center in 1984 and again from 1989. He says that the practice changed markedly during this time: Keep in mind that in1984 they were not doing SF therapy, they were doing something very much like Steve's first book ( de Shazer, 1982) -I called it ecosystemic therapy. It was very much informed by the Palo Alto Group (the Mental Research Institute) ... [In 1989) I discovered SFBT 2.0 that it was a very very different place. You could see that they had made a dramatic move in the direction of SF practice, different kinds of assumptions, much less systemic, much less time on developing clever interventions, much less time mapping troubles or problems, it was much more focussed on solutions and more fluid. (McKergow, 2009 p.79) Many practitioners around the world recall starting their SF practice by read ing Clues, which contained the main ingredients of SFBT (although not with the same balance of elementsmuch more emphasis is given to construct ing exceptions, with conversations around a hypothetical solution reserved for cases where no exceptions can be found). Steve de $hazer went on to write two books which were less about the 'how to' than attempting to add some intellectual rigour to their findings (de Shazer, 1991(de Shazer, , 1994. By the early 1990s the approach was gaining a foothold internationally, and the formation of the European Brief Therapy Association (EBTA) in 1994 gave a place for practitioners to gather, share and develop.
Developments through the l 990s and into the 2000s included more focus on research (and the development of an EBTA research protocol to try to ensure some clarity about what counted as SFBT for research purposes), and the application of SFBT ideas in further areas of therapy and oflife (schools, organisations, social work, prisons, etc). This summary will serve as a base line for what comes next. I don't think there is anything controversial about it as a broad statement of practice.

Emerging developments
During the 2000 and into the 2010s there have been some interesting develop ments emerging in the SFBT field which seem to me to extend and change the classic SFBT 1.0 treatment manual given above. Many of these developments are mentioned, without too much ceremony, by Shennan and Iveson (2011) and indeed in other works from the BRIEF team and others (Iveson, George, & Ratner, 2011;Iveson & McKergow, 2016;Ratner, 2014;Ratner, George, & Iveson, 2012). However. in some cases I fear that the authors have not made enough effort to distinguish their own innovations from established practice. I would summarise the distinctions as: • From action language to description language • From questions to 'rooms' and 'tools' • From goals to best hopes/common project • Preferred futures and scales -same questions, different aims • From exceptions to instances -clearer focus on discussions about the past and present • Losing hangovers from family therapy • Ending the session -no tasks or even actions, more appreciative sum marising • Let's look at each of these in turn.

From action language to description language
From the earliest days, MRI model brief therapy valued specific concrete descriptive information (see Weakland & Fisch, 1992 for a latter day sum mary, which also states that Steve de Shazer attended an early MRI brief ther apy workshop in 1972). The MRI approach, a real paradigm-buster in mental health, is to view such problems not as 'inside' the patient but as some kind of result from the communication patterns between the client and those around them. The focus on specific concrete descriptive information is a way to stop being drawn in to internal psychological hypothesising, and instead focus on the interactions -who is doing what, with whom, when and in what order.

SFBT 2.0
This, in the MRI model, is the key to finding ways to disrupt the pattern which is maintaining the problematic state and opening the doors for something different to happen, by devising a behavioural intervention. Once something diff erent IS happening, the client can be advised to do more of it to promote the new and better pattern of behaviour. This focus on specific language is carried over into SFBT 1.0. Indeed, de $hazer and others consciously named their landmark paper Brief Therapy: Focused Solution Development after the MRI's earlier contribution (Weak land, Fisch, Watzlawick, & Bodin, 1974), as a way of indicating that these two approaches were connected. However, this concrete detail is now much more about what the client wants, the day after the miracle, what is working and so on, rather than about the problem pattern. The overall purposes of both avoiding mentalistic hypothesising and focusing on specifics are still there, as is the focus on gathering information with the goal of devising interventions or giving tasks.
lfwe look now at the recent 'descriptive turn' described by Shennan and Iveson, this same focus on specific concrete descriptive information is pres ent. However, now this detail is not for the therapist to devise interventions, it's much more for the client to say and hear and respond to. If anything, the level of detail is even greater than beforefor example, the 'cuddle' case related by Iveson and McKergow (2016) where a five-second cuddle takes as many minutes to describe. (Sharper eyed readers may have noticed that the title of their paper, Brief Therapy: Focused Description Development, con sciously echoes both the papers mentioned in the previous paragraph, again in tribute to an evolving approach.) The goal of the therapy is changed here. The therapist is not seeking to gather information to devise interventions. Rather, the therapist's role is to help the client expand the details of their descriptions, which then become more and more littered with tiny specifics which might easily suggest them selves as actions for the client. Once the client is talking, say, about the day after the miracle, the therapist will be encouraging more detailed talk about the client and those around them (a very conscious echo of the MRI half a century ago) but in terms of details of what the client wants rather than the problem patterns. Some very simple questions can help this, such as • What would be the first tiny signs you would notice that [X] was start ing to happen? What else?
• Who would be the first person to notice that [X] was happening? What would they notice, that would tell them that [X] was happening? What else? Note that [X] does't have to be specific here -it might be a simple restate ment of best hopes, or even just 'this' in the conversation. These questions help render things detailed, even from very foggy and unclear starting places. So, the role of therapist changes from a sorter-of-detail (to figure out the relevant details for intervention design) into an expander-of-detail (to help the client immerse themselves in their descriptions of better futures, pasts and presents). The vocabulary shifts from 'doing' to 'noticing'. It seems that Steve de Shazer and lnsoo Kim Berg were onto a part of this shift of emphasis as early as 1992 in their paper Doing Therapy: A post-structural revision (de Shazer & Berg, 1992) where they discuss the idea of grammar-shifts during the session. However, they may not have grasped all the consequences of such a shift at that time. This new role afso comes into play in many of the other distinctions I will relate below.

From questions to 'rooms' and 'tools'
Questions have always been at the heart of SFBT. Indeed, the original videos produced by BFTC showing Steve de Shazer and lnsoo Kim Berg at work are subtitled to help viewers keep up with what's happening in the session. The titles say 'Miracle Question' , 'Scaling Question' and so on. The focus is on the question. There are now even books collecting huge numbers of'SF questions' even now books about '1001 SF Questions' (Bannink, 2010), as if a question alone can be 'solution-focused'. (Any question can be asked in a myriad of different ways, and only some of them might be SF.) Of course such questions are an important element of SF practice. How ever, the point of these questions is not simply to be asked -it is to start or build on a section of the interview /session. A miracle question and a single answer may make a little progress, but the real meat lies in what happens next-the expansion of the answers into descriptions in conversation.
The miracle question or scaling question is not simply a question, but the start of a much longer piece of conversation. It therefore makes sense to focus on these chunks of conversation, rather than the questions alone, as discrete elements. So, a 'preferred future' conversation is a miracle question PLUS all the follow ups about first tiny signs that the miracle has happened, who else might notice, what would they notice, what happens next, what difference that makes, to whom, and so on.
Chris Iveson has been talking about an 'art gallery' metaphor for a therapy conversation. This art gallery has a series of 'rooms' with different things to look at and examine. These rooms might include ( Figure 1): • Ticket office -getting some best hopes from the client, a 'ticket' to pro-SFBT 2.0 ceed with the work. • Preferred future gallerya set of pictures or descriptions of a better future for the client and their kin (wrong word) with these best hopes realised • Instances gallerya set of pictures or images of instances in the past or present that connect with this preferred future (which may be con structed using a scale from 1-10) • Gift shopthe final room, which may feature a series of pictures or images of N+l, smaller pieces or signs along the way that progress is being made.

Figure 1. A solution-focused art gallery (after Chris Iveson)
Like the Instances gallery, Adam Froerer of Mercer University talks of a Resources room (Froerer, 2017), where different elements of the client's life showing their resources are gathered. The point of this metaphor is not that each room must be visited in order with no backtracking allowed. Far from italthough there is definitely a direction of travel implied from entrance to exit, during the session the client and therapist may spend more time in one Mark Mcl<ergow room than in others, may go back and revisit something, or perhaps discover something else they hadn't noticed before, and so on. This is not a recipe but a guide to what will inevitably be an individual journey. These 'rooms' help the practitioner keep track of where they are and what's going on in the conversation. It's generally good to stay in one room for a while, not dashing frantically from one room to another. If, during a preferred future conversation, an interesting and relevant 'instance' appears (more on this concept later), the therapist will make a note of it and go to visit it later, rather than diverting immediately to see it now and losing the thread of the preferred future conversation. Therapist and client can move from room to room together, backtracking if necessary. The key distinction here is making the most of each 'room' or phase, rather than leaping between rooms (a tendancy I observe in many absolute beginners to SFBT, who seem to want to apply all the questions at once!).
This development was presaged by the work of Jackson andMcKergow (2002, 2007) on 'solutions tools'. These too were an attempt to find a larger unit of conversation than the question/answer, to help learner practitioners and coaches keep track. Jackson and McKergow attempted to give snappy names to these tools, such as Future Perfect (preferred future) and Counters (including instances and also relevant resources) ( Figure 2).  These terms don't always translate well into other languages, but they have proved durable over the past decade and more in helping practitioners to make the most of the conversation they are having (by sticking with it) rather than rushing off to other conversations when a tempting morsel is dangled by the client. There is also the advantage that the tools concept does not impose a 'correct order' for the tools to be utilised, giving flexibility to the practi tioner within an easy-to-carry framework.

From goals to best hopes/common project
There has long been discussion as to the nature of goals in SFBT. ln the early days, it seems to me that there was a focus on (small specific behavioural) goals as a way of helping the general move away from psychological hypothe sising and towards some kind of discussion about what was desired by the cli ent. The idea of'goal oriented' was a useful marker to distinguish from other 'insight oriented' or 'deep' practices. However, the emergent nature of SFBT means that the process will conclude not when the client's goals are neces sarily met, but when the client is satisfied that they can carry on their lives under their own steam -whether that connects with their initial goals or not.
The move towards starting with asking about the client's 'best hopes', as BRIEF and others do, is a step away from goals. A goal is a specific thing to be accomplished (possibly by a specific date). A hope is something in the future, something desired and yet not present (entirely) at the moment. A best hope is that, but more ambitious and perhaps even scarcely possible. (This is dis tinguished right away from the 'reasons for coming to therapy, which are usu ally in the past and not desired by anyone.) The answers to best hopes, and such answers may not come immediately, are a way to define the theme or nature of the work. Harry Korman (Korman, 2004) has written about defining a 'common project' -common between the client and therapist-upon which they both agree to work for a while. Others including Michael Hjerth (in Klingenstierna, 2001) and Jackson & McKergow (2002) have described this stage as a 'platform' , a place to stand when the work begins. It's good to remember the initial peroration that Steve de Shazer used in his later years: "There are no guarantees, but I will do my best, and I hope you will too. (Looking at client to get some kind of affirmative response)." This is offering a clear contract-I will work on your hopes together with you, and it will take both of us working together. This is not goal setting. It's a title or theme for the work, one which can be put into practice right away in asking a miracle question or a scale to embark on the next phase of the interview. This leaves everything open to change

Mark McKergow
and to evolution as things go on. If goals are set and then clung to, even small goals can put you in gaol (jail) with unexpected developments meaning that what was initially a reasonable goal now turns either into an easy stroll or an impossible dream.

Preferred futures and scales -same questions, different aims
The discussion of 'preferred future' (the day after the miracle, which usually happens tonight) and scaling questions have long been, and continue to be, central elements of SF practice. However, with the move from gathering infor mation to design interventions to building rich and detailed descriptions, the aims of these processes also change. So, the therapist has a 'slightly different head on' when they lead into these discussions.
Rather than listening for behavioural patterns which might be amplified and repeated, the practitioner is more concerned with helping the client to develop and enrich their descriptions, particularly in interactional terms. Who will be doing what, in response to whom, with which tiny noticeable signs? Note how close this appears to the original MRI detailed language idea, but with a different aim. The purpose is not unlocking the whole case with an 'aha' moment, much more a gradual building of detail which somehow leaves the client in a different place at the end -even if there is no particular wizz bang 'aha' moment involved.

From exceptions to instances -clearer focus on discussions about the past and present
Perhaps THE key element in the beginning of SFBT was the art of finding and constructing exceptions -times when the problem should have happened but didn't, or happened less. Indeed, back in 1988 when Clues was published this was the main strategy for the therapist-the miracle question and hypo thetical futures only being discussed if no exceptions could be found. The idea was that the presence of these exceptions showed that not only was the occurrence of the problem not inevitable (as it often appeared to the client) but also that the client could, by clever action and observation, start to pro duce these exceptions deliberately. This opened the door to control and then reduction of the problematic behaviours, with the client in the driving seat.
The original idea of exception finding -times when the problem doesn't happen or happens less -includes everything apart from the problem hap pening at its worst. This is a very broad category! These days it is much more usual for the therapist to embark on some kind of preferred future con-SFBT 2.0 versation first, which allows for a different and better defined alternative -'instances' of this preferred future happening in full or in part, or past events which seem to prefigure this hoped-for future. This gives a much clearer focus on events which relate not simply to the absence or reduction of the problem, but connect to the best hopes and preferred future described by the client. This is a more focused inquiry, and may therefore bring more immediately useful and relevant ideas into the conversation .. Others might refer to these various elements as 'pieces of better· (as distinct from just 'pieces of differ ent') -and of course to discuss that, we need some understanding of what 'better' means in the context. One way to start such a conversation is with the classic 'scale from 1-10' question, where 10 is the preferred future or best hopes realised (there is no need for a full miracle question in order to simply evoke the clients stated best hopes). The client thinks for a moment and then may say '3' or whatever. Of course, the next piece of conversation is 'how come you are 3 on the scale and not lower?' -again a classic piece of SF work which sits broadly unchanged, apart from the new focus on building rich descriptions rather than trying to deliberately prompt the client to action.

Losing hangovers from family therapy
MRI model brief therapy emerged from the same MRI team who had devel oped family therapy some years before (in the 1950s and 1960s). That group had become accustomed to using the trapping and paraphernalia of family therapy-a special therapy room equipped with a one-way mirror, a team of therapists sitting behind the mirror (unseen by the client), a telephone to communicate with the therapist in the room with the client. The family ther apy routine was for the lead therapist to carry out the session with the client (perhaps being prompted by colleagues to ask certain questions) and then leave the client alone while they retreated to the team room behind the mir ror. There, a conference would ensue about who had noticed what, what kind of intervention might be appropriate, and how it might be 'sold' to the client as being useful. The therapist would then return to the client and give an end of-session message, including the intervention.
The idea of giving compliments to the client first emerged as a strategic move in these end-of-session messages. Someone observed that offering the client compliments about them, their handling of the situation so far, their useful strengths and qualities, produced a 'yes-set' -the client nodded along in agreement with these helpful points, and so was more inclined to accept the therapists' intervention. If we continue to explore the new role of the therapist as being the elicitor of detailed descriptions rather than the designer of interventions, then some key things follow:

Journal of Solution-Focused
1. There is no need for a team any more. The conversation is for the client to hear, and the single therapist is part of that. The idea of others watch ing, hidden from view, seems not only costly but also rather creepy.
2. There is therefore no need for a break, as there is no intervention to design and nobody with whom to consult. In the original 1997 EBTA research definition, the break was one of six elements which would indicate that therapy was properly 'solution-focused'. Times have changed.
3. There is not the same need for compliments in a sustained barrage, as the prelude to selling some kind of intervention. That is not to say that compliments are forbidden -more that the purpose of them changes into potential reframing of difficulties and normalising of challenges, and can be used at any time during the session.
4. And of course there is no intervention. Some (including BRIEF) would even say that any conversation about possible actions and next steps is unnecessary-the client will do something if they see fit, and if they don't see fit then there is no point asking about it. I personally, work ing in an organisational context, might still ask the client about their thinking on possible next small steps-the idea being that it's very normal to agree actions in these contexts, to the extent that some peo ple assume that if they haven't agreed an action then they positively don't have to do anything, which is not the impression I seek at all. The focus is usually on helping them focus on small actions, much more likely to get done than large actions and so more likely to make a differ ence. Whatever, this is now at most a light tough final question to the clients rather than a complex intervention with coin tossing, pretend ing, formula first session tasks, or acting differently on alternate days of the week, and all the other aspects that featured in the strategic family therapy playbook.

Ending the session -no tasks or actions, more appreciative sum marising
We have just seen that the end of the session has lost many of the trappings which used to be taken as read in the early days. There is no ritual of break, compliments, tasks. However, we have to bring things to a close in some way. Appreciative summarising by the practitioner can usefully be done here -it shows you've been listening, and offers the client the chance to hear some of the things they've been saying again, perhaps in a different order. One way to add an extra piece of detail which may help the client to look at smaller (and hence more do-able) details is to engage in a description of tiny signs that (N+l) has been reached. Another way to engage in a kind of discussion about actions without talk ing about actions is to scale the client's confidence. Evan George (George, 2017) has recently written about three ways to use confidence scales at the end of a session: • Confidence of being able to make progress on your best hopes (scale of 1-10, followed by discussion of what is helping to be that high). This can be particularly useful at the end of a first session.
• Confidence of maintaining the changes you have made (scale of 1-10, again followed by discussion about what helps things to be that high, and perhaps even higher). This can be useful then therapy is coming to an end.
• Confidence of maintaining change and of reaching 'good enough'. This concept of 'good enough' can be a useful way to gauge progress, in terms not of reaching a 10 but rather in the client's own experience at the moment. One other aspects of ending sessions in SFBT 2.0 is an even clearer com mitment to offering power to the client, in terms of whether there might be another session and when might be a good time for it. So we might expect to see less of'please make an appointment for next Tuesday', and more of'I hope that's been useful for you ... would you like to come back to continue our work together?'. Steve de Shazer always said that therapy should take as many ses sions as it takes and not one more, so we should be looking to help the client decide if and when they wish to return. And if they think that's enough, then it's cause for gentle celebration.

Conclusion
In conclusion, we might summarise the similarities and differences between SFBT 1.0 and SFBT 2.0 as follows.(See table 1, next page).
It seems to me that while these two columns have a lot in common, both explicitly and implicitly, there are enough substantial differences to warrant a distinction being made. In particular the role of the practitioner is quite dif- ferent, going from someone who might see themselves as a skilful task master to one whose role is to help the client expand their descriptions of what is wanted. In the former outlook the change will happen after the session, when the client goes out and does something differently ( or views something differ· ently). In the latter outlook, important change is happening right there in the session, in the conversation

SFBT 2.0
This is not to say that SFBT 1.0 is wrong. or bad, or outdated, or anything like that. There are people doing it right now, and having good results with their clients. However, if we are to progress SFBT it would seem to be importamt that we be clear about what we're doing and not doing. I suspect that many practitioners are probably doing some from each column right now. The cur rent situation, where all the above happens under the same heading. does not seem to me to be a helpful place for practitioners, learners or indeed researchers. There is some initial research (Shennan and Iveson, 2011) that what I term SFBT 2.0 is more brief -and hence better, by the aesthetics of brief therapy-than the more established version. There is also experi ence -by me over several years and by others -that this newer version of SFBT is effective, efficient, and even more elegant than the previous versions.
This of course must be tested. But it will be impossible to test if we don't make a distinction at the start. Some of the key characteristics of a Solution-Focused approach as noted by de Shazer and Berg (1997) are; using a miracle question to help a client and therapist to envisage their preferred future, scaling the process, compli menting on the strengths involved so far, and assigning homework or experi ments that may activate these strengths (Durrant, 2016).

References
The Resilience Doughnut is a strength-based ecological model, which uses a Solution-Focused approach to activate existing strong resources in a per son's life to help them towards their preferred future. As a dynamic conversa tional tool, the Resilience Doughnut model prompts questions that envisage the preferred future, highlights the strong resources and provides a platform to compliment how they have worked so far (Worsley, 2011(Worsley, , 2012. The resources are seen in the everyday ordinary relationships that exist at any point in time and can be activated by combining the strengths in a homework activity or experiment. It is therefore of value for people, to accurately assess their own resources as an indication of the possible pathways for further personal development. A measure should preferably be based on either a definition or a theory, how ever there are very many different definitions of resilience and no common consensus. Thus basing a measure on a theory or a model would be the remaining option. The Resilience Doughnut model (Worsley, 2014a), origi nated in response to working with youth in a range of environments from clinical psychological practice, youth work, corrective services, and paediat ric medicine and education facilities. It was observed that the most useful interventions (Dominguez & Arford, 2010;Riley & Masten, 2005;Steinhardt & Dolbier, 2008) took into account where and with whom the young person was more likely to develop the navigation and negotiation skills, in order to help them cope with their difficulties. From observation in clinical practice, it became clear that in order to help vulnerable young adults to develop resil ience it may be more useful to measure the potential pathways and contexts where resilience can develop, than to quantify their resilience at any one time (Ben-Arieh, 2005;Burgin & Steck, 2009). The Resilience Doughnut model was developed after examining research into the ecological and developmental assets, which build a child's healthy self-esteem and social competence that contribute to building resilience (Bronfenbrenner, 2005;Masten & Wright, 2010;Sharkey, You & Schnoebelen, 2008;Toi, Jordans, Reis & de Jong, 2009;Ungar & Liebenberg, 2009). The model has been helpful for future planning and programming with youth in a number of contexts (Worsley, 2014) and has the potential to influence policy development to effect positive changes in young people and as a strengthening tool against mental health difficulties.

Psychological Resilience
From previous research (Benard, 2004;Grotberg, 1995;McGraw, Moore, Fuller & Bates, 2008;M. Rutter, 2006;Ungar, Brown, Liebenberg, Cheung & Levine, 2008) it seems that there are three dynamics that help to define the process of resilience. Firstly there are internal or personal characteristics that enable a person to bounce back from adversity (Benard, 2004;Grotberg, 1995). Secondly there are external or environmental influences that contrib ute to the building of these internal assets or personal competencies (Fuller, McGraw & Goodyear, 1998;Ungar, 2008;Ungar & Lerner, 2008;Werner & Smith, 2001). Thirdly, the interaction of the internal characteristics with the external available resources, which hinder or enhance a resilience mindset ultimately affect an individual's reaction to adversity (Rutter, 2008). The Resilience Doughnut model is a simple diagram of two circles, one inside the other, which conceptually represents the interaction of these inter nal characteristics and external contexts in developing resilience. The model is based on the definition that resilience is a process of continual develop ment of personal competence while negotiating available resources in the face of adversity. The inner circle represents the internal individual characteristics and the outer circle represents the external contexts within which an individual develops. The external contexts are divided into seven sections, each of which has been shown in the research to contribute to building individual resilience. The interactional nature of the internal and external worlds of an individual is represented by the visual connection between the inner circles of the frame work within the external circle. Thus, the two circles, an inner circle and an external circle divided into seven external contexts, represent the essence of the resilience doughnut model (see Figure 1).

The internal structure of the Resilience Doughnut
The inner circle of the framework, representing the internal characteristics of an individual showing resilience, give expression to a number of concepts, which repeatedly appear in research. These concepts contribute to raising self-esteem (Benard, 2004;Frydenberg, 2007;Grotberg, 1995;Werner E., 1992), self-efficacy (Benard, 2004;H. W. Marsh, Martin & Hau, 2006), and an individual's awareness of their available resources (McDonald & Mair;2010). In combination they contribute to resilience as noted by Grotberg's I have, I am and I can categories (1995). These categories are the basis of the inter nal individual concepts for the Resilience Doughnut, which interact with the external contexts.
The external structure of the Resilience Doughnut.

Scale development process
The items in the Resilience Doughnut measure were initially generated from the research on each of the seven sections of external factors in the model (Table 1). This formed the preliminary Resilience Doughnut tool, which divided the external section into seven subtests with ten items within each subtest. The items were simple statements, beginning with "I have", "I am", or To review the items a small sample of young people (30 students, aged 12-15 years, 18 males and 12 females) who attended two state high schools in Sydney's southern suburbs and 150 adults who had attended the Resilience Doughnut training workshops over an 18-month period (primarily teachers, school counsellors, case workers and youth-workers) were selected. Signed permission was sought from parents and guardians of the youth prior to the interviews.
Ten items for each of the seven subtests were generated initially based on the above empirical research and the students then tested each item. Stu https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/journalsfp/vol2/iss2/11 Scale development and psychometric qualities of the Resilience Doughnut tool dents were asked to fill out the questionnaire and give comments and items were revised in accordance with comments.
Each subtest was also tested with the sample of adults who worked with young people in various contexts as recommended by DeVellis (2003). Fur ther modifications were made to the items, with particular consideration as to the helpfulness of a conversational tool around each of the contexts. These adult experts on adolescents, suggested multiple times that the posi tively worded items would help the adults and young people feel confident in discussing their strengths within each of the seven contexts. For this reason, negatively worded items were removed and the language used by the sample subjects replaced a number of negative items.
Based on the feedback from the young people and the expert adults, the dichotomous response format was changed to a Likert scale of six, giving a forced choice. The format adapted to the suggestions of the youth people and is as follows; 0=xxx=no never, 1= xx=almost never, 2=x=not really, 3=✓= sort of, 4 =✓✓=sometimes, S=✓✓✓=yes always. Only the ticks and crosses were visible with the wording appearing when the pointer hovered over the area. The number allocated to the response was not visible to the students. This continuum allowed for a wider range of responses and stimulated further discussion with subsequent representative samples. The scores were collated for each item and then divided by S giving a total score out of 10 for each subtest. These total scores were visible to the students.

Aim.
The present study explores the psychometric properties of the Resilience Doughnut (RD) scale in relation to reliability and indications of validity. To test the hypothesis that each factor represents external contextual factors they were treated as independent subtests and confirmatory factor analysis was undertaken to explore the measurement model of each of the subtests separately. It was hypothesised that each subtest would factorise according to the items representing the research constructs.

Participants
In all, 867 adolescents were included from seven high schools in three states in Australia. There were 75% female and 25% male participants. Their mean age was 15.20 (SD=l.71). Each school sought permission from the partici pant's parents or guardians to be involved in the study. The seven schools were representative of a wide range of students from low to high socio eco nomic status across three states in Australia. Two of the schools were for Catholic girls, (low fees), and a third one for boys (high fees) in middle class areas in Melbourne and Sydney. The other four schools comprised of one state boys high school ( no fee) in Sydney, a coeducational school in a country town of NSW, a coeducational school in WA, (each from a low socio economic areas) and a private school in Sydney with high fees from a high socio economic area.

Measures
The Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ), (Hjemdal, Friborg, Stiles, Mar tinussen & Rosenvinge, 2006;Soest, Mossige, Stefansen & Hjemdal, 2010) has 28 items with five subscales of personal (a=.76) and social competence (a=.77), structured style (a=.69), awareness of social resources (a=.79) and family cohesion (a=.89). Higher scores indicate higher levels of resilience on the specific factors. The READ is a measure of protective factors associated with resilience that has shown good validity. Previous studies have shown the READ has a negative correlation with depressive and social anxiety symp· toms, as well as the ability to predict depressive symptoms controlling for age, gender, stressful life events and levels of anxiety symptoms (Hjemdal, Aune, Reinfjell, Stiles & Friborg, 2007;Hjemdal, Vogel, Solem, Hagen & Stiles, 2011). In another large study a moderate negative correlation was found with symp toms of emotional disorders and self-harm, and mild negative correlation with externalizing behaviour like para-suicide, alcohol intoxication, smoking, using illicit drugs violent behaviour and being exposed to bullying (von Soest, Mossing, Stefansen & Hjemdal, 2010).
The Strength & Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ,) (Goodman, 1997; Hawes & Dadds, 2004) has 33 items with five subscales: emotional symptoms (a =.66), conduct problems (a=.66), hyperactivity (a=.80), peer difficulties (a=.59), and pro-social behaviours (a= .70). Higher scores indicate a higher presence of emotional, conduct, hyperactivity, and peer difficulties with the exception of pro-social behaviours where higher scores indicate presence of higher levels of positive characteristics. The SDQ has been used widely in Australia and is regularly used as a pre-screening tool for students to determine behav ioural or emotional difficulties. It has high discriminate validity and has cut off points to classify subjects as normal, borderline or abnormal. The total dif ficulties score is determined by the sum of the scales excluding the prosocial scale. The prosocial scale assesses a child's resources, ability to relate well with peers and show care for others (Silva,Osorio & Loureiro,201S). The Resilience Doughnut tool (RD) (Worsley, 2014b) which has 70 items, divided into seven subtests titled parent, skill, family, education, peer, com munity and money.

Data analysis
The means and standard deviations as well as correlations were estimated using IBM SPSS 22.0. The confirmatory factor analyses was undertaken using Mplus 7.31 (Muthen & Muthen, 1998. Because each of the subtests are separate tests relating to specific themes, each of the subtests were run independently in confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). The CFA was conducted with the asymptotically distribution free method to examine the overall fit of the measurement model; error terms in the items were allowed to correlate. The fit indices derived were the comparative fit index (CFI) and the incremen tal fit index (IFI), both with values 2: .90 being regarded as acceptable model fits. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) values s .OS was considered a good model fit. Pearson correlations were calculated between the factor scores and measures of psychological distress.

Procedure
The three measures were completed on a purpose build computer program which enabled the results to be collated immediately. Students had access to the results of their Resilience Doughnut highlighting the three strongest factors. The time taken to complete the questionnaires was 20-30 minutes depending on the student's literacy level. The consistency with the instruc tions and delivery of the measures, as well as the student report of more hon est responses to the questions was ensured using the on line format.
After receiving permission from parents, students were then sent log in details to complete the tests. Some of the schools used class time for the stu dents to complete the tests while others required the students to complete the questionnaires at home.
De-identified data from each student was then immediately available for the researchers in order to run the statistical analysis.

Confirmatory fact.or analysis
Participant included in the confirmatory factor analysis was 867. The results from the CFA are presented in Table 2. For the subtest, Parents, no changes were undertaken. CF! and TLI were within acceptable range. The RMSEA was slightly above the recommended limit but still within the acceptable range. For the subtest Skills the initial results were x2(35)=142.99, p < .000, CFl=.934, TLI=.899, RMSEA=.070, (Cl=.059 -.082). Based on the modifica tion indices, two items were deleted and then the fit indices were within the acceptable range. For the subtest Family, the fit indices were within the acceptable range with 10 items. For the subtest Education the initial results were X2 (35) Table 3 presents the correlations between the subtests of the Resilience Doughnut and READ total score as well as its five factors. The correlations were all positive and significant in the moderate to strong range. The high est correlation was between RD Parents and the READ Family cohesion. The lowest correlation was between RD Peer and READ Structured style. However, RD Education and READ Structured style correlated in the high range.  Table 3: The correlations between the Resilience Doughnut subtests and the READ total and factor scores (N=867). Table 4 presents the correlations between the Resilience Doughnut subtests and the SDQ factor scores. All correlations were significant, and negative for the SDQ factor scores Emotional symptoms, Conduct problems, Hyperactivity and Peer problems and positive for the factor Pro-social. The exception was the non-significant correlation between Peer and Hyperactivity. Table S presents four multiple hierarchical linear regression analyses with four of the SDQ factors as dependent variables. The results indicate that the subtests RD Parents, RD Skills and RD Education were unique predictors of SDQ Emotional symptoms and that they explained 13% of the variance. For SDQ Conduct disorder 16% of the variance was explained by the unique predictors were RD Parents, RD Education. For SDQ Hyperactivity 21 % was explained, and the negative unique predictors were RD Education, RD Money, and RD Parents. However, RD Peer was a positive predictor indicating that the Lyn Worsley and Odin Hjemdal higher adolescents score themselves on the resilience peer subtest the higher they score themselves on levels of hyperactivity. For SDQ Peer problems 9% of the variance was explained by the predictors. The negative significant pre dictors were RD Parents, RD Peers and RD Education. However, RD Money was a positive unique significant predictor of levels of SDQ peer problems.

Discussion
If personal resilience is the process of navigating and negotiating with social resources (RD) to increase personal and social competence (READ). It would therefore be the successful use of these resources, which would show a healthy coping response to adversity. That is, activating helpful resources (RD) would lead to a healthy response to difficulties rather than being overwhelmed by them (SDQ). Furthermore, working with the existing strong resources sup ports a solution focused approach of finding and doing more with what is working (Kelly, Bluestone-Miller, Mervis & Fuerst, 2012).
Since the Resilience Doughnut model represented the available resources in this study, the Resilience Doughnut tool needed to be assessed for validity and reliability before any correlations could be carried out. The results from the confirmatory factor analysis appeared to align with the theoretical con cepts from the research on each of the seven contexts. Several items were deleted to achieve an acceptable fit as each of these items another referred to the same concept. One item was removed from the Community subscale as it did not add any value to the fit. The removal of9 items therefore made the combined subscales 61 items for a confirmatory analysis showing an accept able fit for the model. Internal consistency of the scales was then examined and provided evidence for an acceptable reliability of the scales for the sam ple with an Alpha coefficient between .63 and .87 for each of the factors. From these results it appears that the research constructs are well represented by the items. This result then enabled the second set of hypothesis of the model to be tested.
The first hypothesis suggests that a higher score in resource strengths as shown by the Resilience Doughnut would be associated with a higher score in personal and social competence as measured by the READ. The five sub scales in the READ are; Personal competence (self-confidence, planning, hope, determination); Social resources (aware of supports and value of people); Social competence (communication and social skills); Family cohesion (pos itive family, supportive and common values); Personal structure (plan ahead and organization skills). The high correlation of each of the subscales of the READ and each of the contexts of the RD shows that strong positive connec tions in various contexts is related to stronger social and personal compe tence. Of interest was the separate subtest for parents and family in the RD. The items in the RD refer to specific characteristics of the relationship of the parents separate to other family members thereby giving a separate subtest. It would seem there is value of having a separate measure when there is high parental conflict or out of home care is in place allowing a measure to assess the extended family cohesion. The high correlation of both RD parent and RD family with the READ family cohesion subscale confirms the validity of both these scales in measuring the positive family support available. The lowest correlation between RD peer and READ structured style, indicate that stronger peer relationships were not associated with stronger organizational skills, however the high correlation with the RO education and the READ structured style indicates a stronger connection with education was associ ated with stronger organizational skills. Thus from the correlations with the READ and the RD subtests it would seem that the hypotheses have been con firmed indicating that the higher the resource strengths, indicated by the RD subtests, the higher the level of personal and social competence experienced and vice versa.
The second hypothesis is that an increase in resource strengths would lead to lower difficulties experienced according to the SDQ. A significant neg ative correlation with the four difficulty subscales in the SDQ, with six of the seven contexts of the Resilience Doughnut was evident, again indicating that positive connections in various contexts are related to lower emotional and social problems and higher prosocial behaviours. The only subscale to not reach significance was the peer subscale with the hyperactivity subscale.
The subtest of hyperactivity is sensitive to inattentiveness and restless ness, which may not directly impact the relationship with peers. Of interest however is the strong correlation of hyperactivity with the RD education sub scale which may indicate that symptoms of inattention and restlessness inter fere with the youth's experience of education.
Further interesting findings were revealed in the multiple hierarchical analysis showing there were various subscales of the SDQ predicted by the RD subscales.
High RD Parent, Skills and Education factors were unique predictors of lower Emotional symptoms. High RD Parent and Education factors were unique predictors of lower conduct disorders, and high RD Education, Money and Parent factors were unique predictors of lower hyperactivity. The pos itive predictor of a high RD Peer factor with symptoms of hyperactivity is contrary to the correlation findings. However, with other factors taken into account the positive prediction may be explained by the distracting nature of friendships during adolescence with more friendships reported, the more distractible and restless a young person may be (Marsh, Allen, Ho, Porter & McFarland, 2006). Furthermore, some of the items for the RD peer factor refer to tensions experienced through conflict ("I have friends who say what they think and sometimes we fight"), and fitting in with the peer group ("I can change how I behave in my group so I can fit in"), which may lead to times of Further analysis also showed that higher RD peer, parent and education subscales predicted lower RD peer problems, which again supported the hypothesis that the successful negotiation of resources led to social and per sonal competence. However, it was interesting to note that a high RD money subscale predicted higher RD peer problems. The RD money subscale refers to the management of money ("I can talk about how to save and spend money in my family"), earning through working ("I am earning money through doing extra chores or working"), spending ("I am happy with how I spend my money"), saving ("I can wait and save for things I would like to buy") and attending to chores at home ("I am asked to contribute to chores around the house"). Of consideration, the youth in the sample who are in paid work (ages 15 years,) would be in the early stage of their paid working life and time away to work or do chores may interfere with social interaction with their peers.
Furthermore, the regression analysis shows that between two and four of the RD factors independently of each other, predict levels of emotional and behavioural symptoms. It has long been the hypothesis for the model (Wors ley, 2012(Wors ley, , 2015 that when three RD factors are strong and positive, the indi vidual has greater levels of competence associated with resilience skills. This would suggest that the contexts are not independent dimensions of resilience. This study has not addressed the interactional nature of the external contexts on resilience thus further studies are recommended to test this hypothesis.
The results from this study enable a number of pathways of study to con tinue.
It would be of interest to examine the number and strength of the RD sub scales which contribute to developing resilience. Understanding the number of protective contexts needed to develop resilience could lead to predictive and preemptive analysis giving rise to more tailored interventions in times of difficulties. Examination of each of the protective contexts and their rel ative strengths in developing resilience across cultures may show multiple pathways to resilience according to the available strengths in each culture. Parcel, Dufur & Zito, 2010;Sarracino, 2010) in coping with life are well sup ported by the Resilience Doughnut model. It might be advantageous to then use the Resilience Doughnut model to assess the strengths of social capital in mental health (McKenzie & Harpham, 2006), aging. trauma, natural disasters (Augustine, 2010;Pfefferbaum, Pfefferbaum & Norris, 2010;Terrion, 2006).
In conclusion it would seem that the Resilience Doughnut tool based on the model is a good fit representing the concepts from the literature and pre vious studies in resilience ecological factors. The linear hypotheses of higher resources leading to increased personal competence, and decreased emo tional and social difficulties was well supported by this study of Australian youth. It would therefore be advantageous to explore this model in a number of contexts to determine the validity of the model across contexts and cul tures, as well as ascertain the number and strength of the resources needed to build resilience at any one time.

About the authors:
Lyn Worsley is a Clinical Psychologist with a background in nursing. teach ing, and youth work. She is Director of the Resilience Centre in Sydney, Aus tralia, which has a reputation for innovative Solutio-Focused approaches to client change through individual and group therapies for over 20 years. At the Resilience Centre, Lyn supervises specialist psychologists, and coordinates community seminars, training workshops, and resilience groups for people of all ages. Lyn is the author of The Resilience Doughnut, a pioneering model showing the strong contexts where resilience is enhanced, both during devel opment and throughout adulthood. The Resilience Doughnut has become a foundational ecological model of resilience used by practitioners all around Australia and is quickly spreading to other countries including. Singapore, Canada and the UK.
Email: lyn@theresiliencecentre.com.au Odin Hjemdal is professor of clinical adult psychology and quantitative meth ods and statistics in the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian Univer sity of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. His research is related to resilience among adults and adolescents, and particularly measuring protec tive factors. Developing research based direct measures of protective factors that captures essential protective resources is important because it may con tribute to clarifying the relation between risk, vulnerability, protection and mental health. In addition to resilience, his research spans mental health, pre vention of psychological disorders like anxiety and depression, psychological components related to somatic health in e.g. heart disease and cancer, cogni tive therapy and meta-cognitive therapy. He is a cognitive and a metacogni tive therapist and a supervisor in both therapies. Resilience is an important area of study because coping with stress, change and adversity is a facet of everyday life. This is particularly true for children and adolescents, who experience multiple biological, social and psychological changes during this developmental phase (Barrett et al., 2014 ). It is generally accepted that resilience is an individual's ability to bounce back from adver- sity (Ungar, 2015;Prince-Embury, 2014;Werner & Smith, 2001). This ability is influenced by the complex interaction between protective factors, such as positive social relationships, economic stability, or adaptive coping skills, and risk factors, such as vulnerability to mental health problems, poor attach ment or other adversities (Ungar et al., 2015;Werner & Smith, 1992;2001). Ungar et al. (2015) emphasise that protective factors are not just personal characteristics or qualities of the individual, but also include the availability of community resources (e.g., social supports, and formal service providers) as well as the individual's capacity to access and utilise these resources.

Defining Resilience
There is still no single agreed definition of resilience despite consensus that resilience is developed through both internal resources and external factors. Early definitions of resilience were primarily focused on overcoming adver sity, such as Grotberg (1995), who stated, "resilience is the universal capacity which allows a person, group or community to prevent, minimise or over come the damaging effects of adversity" (p.3). Masten and Powell (2003) stated, "Resilience refers to patterns of positive adaptation in the context of significant risk and adversity" (p. 4).
Over time, definitions have developed to be more comprehensive and complex, to include not just the individual, but also the community within which they live. Ungar, Brown, Liebenberg, Cheung and Levine (2008) define resilience as "the capacity of individuals to navigate their physical and social ecologies to provide resources, as well as their access to families and commu nities who can culturally navigate for them" (p. 168). In this definition Unger et al. (2008) identify that resilience is more than just having, or not having resources, but it is also the capacity to know how to use these resources to be resilient. This definition also identifies that individuals require support from their families and communities to assist in understanding and using these resources.
Ungar (2015) describes the development of resilience as a complex, mul tidimensional process, where the ability to withstand adversity is not sim ply dependent on the outweighing of protective factors over risk factors, but rather, "resilience is predicted by both the capacity of individuals and the capacity of their social and physical ecologies to facilitate their coping in cul turally meaningful ways." (p. 4) Overall, it is evident that throughout the research there is a consensus that resilience is developed through both internal resources such as personal characteristics and skills, as well as external factors, such as environmental, Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people social and educational factors. Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker (2000) clarified this further, by stating that the personal qualities can be referred to as "resil iency': whereas "resilience" is the developmental process that occurs through the interaction of the internal qualities and the external factors.

Theories of Resilience
There are many theories about what formulates the protective factors of resil ience. Grotberg (1995) categorised them into three main areas 'I HAVE, I AM, I CAN' . I HAVE are the external supports that promote resilience (e.g., I have trusting relationships); I HAVE factors are foundational to the subsequent categories. I AM is the child's personal strengths and characteristics (e.g., I am loveable). The I CAN is the child's interpersonal and social skills ( e.g., I can communicate and problem solve).
Other researchers have provided more specific categories, such as com munity, school, family and individual/peers (Fuller, 1998) and social com petence, problem solving, autonomy and sense of purpose (Benard, 2004). Ungar (2008) redefined the protective factors and personal qualities as 'ten sions'. He hypothesised that people need to balance these tensions in order to enhance their resilience, and having too much or too little of these resources removes the tensions that are important to developing resilience. Overall, there appears to be a consensus in the research that resilience is developed through both internal resources, such as personal characteristics and skills, and external factors, such as environmental, social and educational factors.

Intervention Programs for Non-Clinical Populations
Understanding that resilience is a process influenced by risk and protec tive factors, more recent research has been interested in how resilience can be developed or enhanced. Seligman (2002) suggests that resiliency can be enhanced with Positive Psychology through utilising a strength-based approach to build people's capacity, rather than correcting their difficulties. There is considerable research into treatment programs that aim to enhance resilience, and evidence suggests that prevention programs are important in assisting people to overcome difficult circumstances and prevent mental health problems (Barrett et al., 2014). There are a number of international resilience-based programs, such as the Penn Resiliency Program (Gillham et al., 2007); however; there are only two resilience programs that have been evaluated in Australia. The FRIENDS program (Barrett, 2012)

FRIENDS program
The FRIENDS program (Barrett, 2012) is the most widely researched resil ience-enhancing program in Australia and was first developed and evaluated by Barrett and Turner (2001). The aim of the FRIENDS program (Barrett, 2012) is to develop social and emotional skills in children and adolescents in order to promote resilience and prevent anxiety and depression (Barrett et al., 2014). The program is based on the theoretical framework of Cogni tive-Behavioural Theory (CBT) and Positive Psychology (Barrett et al., 2014). It is uses the acronym of FRIENDS to form the basis of the program, for exam ple, the F stands for 'feelings' and focuses on developing social and emotional skills.
The FRIENDS program (Barrett, 2012) has been evaluated several times as a universal program, using pre-intervention, post-intervention and fol low-up data (Lock & Barrett, 2003;Barrett, Lock & Farrell, 2005). The results demonstrated that the program was successful in reducing anxiety and increasing coping skills, with the strongest effects noticed in the group of children aged between 9 and 10 years old compared to the group of adoles cents aged between 14 and 16 years-old. Lock and Barrett (2003) used these findings to suggest that earlier intervention could be more beneficial than later intervention.
A follow-up study of Lock and Barrett's (2003) findings was completed to assess the effects of the program at 24 and 36-month intervals (Barrett, Farrell, Ollendick & Dadds, 2006). This study found that the reductions in anxiety were maintained for the younger age group (9-10 years) of students who were in the treatment condition, and not in the aged-matched control group. They also reported a gender effect, with girls in the intervention group scoring lower on anxiety after the intervention than girls in the control group, although this difference was not maintained at the 36-month follow-up. The authors suggest that this finding supports the previous study's hypothesis that earlier intervention, specifically during ages 9-10 years, is ideal for long term benefits.
Whilst these research findings are positive, an important consideration of the FRIENDS program is whether it actually focuses on developing resilience or whether it focuses more on the management of anxiety. The studies dis cussed primarily define themselves as a CST interventions to reduce anxiety, rather than as a program designed to develop resilience. This is particularly evidenced by the authors not using any known measures of resilience, such  , 2006) to measure the effect of the FRIENDS interven tion on developing the factors that build resilience.

The Resilience Doughnut
The Resilience Doughnut program was developed by Worsley (2006) and is based in the theoretical framework of Solutions-Focused Theory (SFT) and Positive Psychology. As the name suggests, the program is based around the concept of a doughnut, where inside the doughnut represents the internal strengths of the individual, and the outside of the doughnut represents seven protective factors they may have, such as social and environmental factors (see Figure 1). The internal strengths are based on the work of Grotberg (1995), while the protective factors are rooted in the theoretical research by Werner and Smith (2001), Fuller (1998) and Ungar (2008) and are 'Par ent', 'Skill', 'Family and Identity', 'Education', 'Peer', 'Community' and 'Money'. Worsley (2014) suggests that the process of resilience is built when the exter nal factors feed into the internal strengths of a child. She states that the Resil ience Doughnut is not about teaching children to be resilient, but rather it is about teaching families and communities to have relationship skills that build resilience in children. This process occurs through helping children and their families gain more self-awareness and social skills, as well as developing cre ative ways to strengthen their external protective factors (Worsley, 2008).
Worsley (2014) suggests that not all seven factors need to be present to build resilience but hypothesises that three factors are sufficient to enhance wellbeing. Through strengthening three factors, Worsley (2014) hypothesises that the rest of the factors will be strengthened too. This is based on the prin ciples ofSFT, which suggests that focusing on strengths, rather than problems, will elicit positive change and promote resiliency (Seligman, 2002). Similar to the FRIENDS program, the Resilience Doughnut framework teaches students about optimistic thinking and also provides parent education sessions on the model.
The Resilience Doughnut (Worsley, 2006) has not been researched as fre quently as the FRIENDS program; however, three case studies conducted by Worsley (2014) demonstrate a number of positive outcomes for the model. Three schools were selected to utilise the Doughnut model. The first and sec ond case study used students aged between 13-15 years-old to implement the program, and the third case study used students aged between 12-17 years old. Specific staff members were trained in the Resilience Doughnut model, which they implemented with their students using an online tool. The online tool assisted the students in identifying their three strongest protective fac tors. The students then had to develop a project linking their three strengths. For example, a student's strengths might be Parent Factor, Skill Factor (skill being football) and Community Factor. This child's project might involve plan ning a football match in the local park and inviting his parents to participate.
Pre-and post-measures of anxiety, depression and resilience were taken for each case study, including longitudinal follow up at 12 and 24 months. The measure diff ered across each of the case studies, but included the Mul tidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC-10;March, 1997) Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people ise on the specific resources around them (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). Also, implementing the Doughnut program with both primary school students and high school students and comparing their scores of resilience. This may build on Barrett et al. (2006) suggestion that programs implemented at an earlier age are more effective at reducing symptoms of anxiety and/or depression and improving resilience.

Aims and Hypotheses
The current study builds on Worsley (2014) research by evaluating two pro grams based on the Resilience Doughnut (2006) model. The Connect-3 (8-12 year-olds) and Linked-up (13-16 year-olds) programs are interactive 6-week group programs designed to help young people develop their personal com petency, improve their social interactions and develop resilient thinking skills (Worsley, 2012a& Worsley, 2012b. This research aims to assess the effec tiveness of the two programs by measuring the change from pre-intervention to post-intervention for participants, using the Resilience Scale for Adoles cents (READ; Hjemdal et al., 2006) and the Strengths and Difficulties Ques tionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997).
It was hypothesised that there would be a significant improvement in the resilience measure scores and a decrease in difficulties scores at post-inter vention. Specifically, it was hypothesised that participants would increase their scores on all subscales of the READ and decrease their scores on the subscales of the SDQ. with the exception of the Prosocial scale, which would increase. Secondly, it was hypothesised that the Connect-3 group will have a greater decrease in their difficulty scores and increase in the resilience scores compared to the Linked-Up population, based on Barrett et al. (2006) find ings. Finally, it was hypothesised that the female participants would have a greater reduction in their difficulties scores and increase in their resilience scores compared to male participants, again based on Barret et al. (2006) results.
The participants parent's completed a consent form with their child, which provided permission for their child's information to be collected, de-identified and used for the research project. Participants who did not give consent to participate in the research were still able to complete the resil ience program.
The programs were completed at The Resilience Centre, Sydney, within a high socio-economic suburb as indicated by the Socio Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). The SEIFA is a range of indices created by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to analyse the socio-economic status of a population. The Epping-North Epping Statistical Area 2 (SA2) ranks in the highest decile for three of the four SEIFA measures, indicating that it is a highly advantaged and highly educated population (ABS, 2013). More specific demographic details were unavailable for the participants, however, participants generally came from financially resourced families, as they were required to pay $350 to par ticipate in the program. Furthermore, as part of the program, parents of the participants were invited to attend parent-information sessions to encourage them to engage with what their child was learning. There is no data available for parent attendance at these sessions.

Procedure
Participants were recruited in several ways, most commonly through self-re ferral to the program. The resilience programs have a strong reputation in the local geographic area, and therefore, many referrals come from recom mendations by previous participants. Other referral sources include general practitioners, school counsellors or psychologists who have knowledge of the program, and usually refer because the young person has difficulties with anxiety. Specific details of how many participants were referred from each source were unavailable for this research.
The group programs ran with approximately 6-10 participants in each group. If a participant was unable to attend any of the six sessions, they were offered an individual catch-up session with the provisional psychologist who was co-facilitating the program.
The Linked-Up and Connect-3 programs each ran over a 6-week period for 1. 5-hour sessions, per-week. The programs had identical structure, using different examples and worksheets to tailor the concepts of the Resilience Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people Table 1. Additionally, a parent information session was completed following the first session so parents and other family or community members could become engaged in what their child was doing within the program. After each other session, a parent letter was provided, detailing session content and how the strategies discussed could be implemented and developed at home or school. No data is available on overall student attendance at the 6 sessions or parent's attendance during the first week. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997) and the Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ; Hjemdal, et al., 2006) were admin istered to students 1-week prior to the program commencing and repeated following the conclusion of the sixth session. Most participants completed the questionnaires via a computer, but due to some technical complications, six participants were required to complete the questionnaire using paper and pencil and results entered into the database manually.

Measures
The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997). The SDQ is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire for people aged 3-16 years. It contains 25 items, divided into 5 subscales: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems, and pro-so cial behaviour. or adversities. Higher scores on each of the subscales indicate higher level of emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems and total difficulties, with the exception of the prosocial scale. As the prosocial scale is a measure of social competency, higher scores indicate a higher level of social resilience. The SDQ subscale scores are divided into four descriptive categories, based on the clinical cut-off points for the subscales. The descrip tive categories range from 'close to average', indicating difficulties/prosocial score within a normal range through to 'very high (very low)' , indicating a much higher than average score for difficulties (or much lower prosocial score). The SDQ has previously demonstrated good internal consistency, with a Cronbach a of .93 (Goodman, 2001). For the current study the SDQ had mod erate-weak internal consistency, with alpha coefficients ranging between .43 to .65 at pre-intervention to .43 to .82 at post-intervention (See Table 2). The validity of the SDQ is well established (Goodman, Ford, Simmons, Gatward & Meltzer, 2000).  Hjemdal et al., 2006). For the current study, the READ demonstrated adequate internal consistency, with alpha coefficients ranging between .58 to .83 at pre-intervention and .43 to .83 at post-interven tion (See Table 2). The READ is considered to be a valid measure ofresilience (von Soest, Mossige, Stefansen & Hjemdal, 2009).

Statistical Analyses
Statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics for Win dows (version 21.0; SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA) and all statistical tests used a type I error of a=.05. Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated for both the READ and SDQ, at both time points to determine the internal consistency of the subscales for these students.
Linear mixed models were created for all subscales ofSDQ (total difficul ties, emotion symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems and pro-social behaviour) and READ (personal com petence, social competence, structured style, awareness of resources and family cohesion) to compare baseline to post-treatment for students in each of the Connect-3 and Linked-Up groups separately.
A mixed models approach to analysing repeated measures data was used as it analyses on an intention to treat basis and there was incomplete data from participants for pre-intervention to post-intervention. The cur rent study only had 29 data points available for post-intervention analysis. Mixed models analysis ensured all participants were included in the analysis and allowed inherent adjustments for baseline scores. Another advantage of using a mixed models approach is that the optimal covariance matrix is selected, resulting "in more appropriate estimates of the effect of treatment and their standard errors" (Brown & Prescott, 2006: p. 3). Model choice was based on comparison of two covariance patterns (Compound Symmetry and Unstructured/General) and selection of the covariance matrix with the best fit was indicated by the lowest Akaike's Information Criteria (AIC) and Schwartz's Bayesian Criterion (BIC) values. Compound Symmetry Matrix was most appropriate model for all subscales. Cohen's d effect size was calculated for each of the variables using the pooled standard deviation from the resid ual covariance matrix (Dunst & Hamby, 2012).
Further models were used to examine for any difference in gender for each of the two age groups (Connect-3 and Linked-Up). Correlation between Kaitlyn Miller, Lyn Worsle y , Tanya Hanstock and Megan Valentine the READ and SDQ subscales was examined using Spearman's rho due to the relatively small number of students and non-normality of the distributions of the subscales.

Main findings from baseline to post-intervention
Results for the Connect-3 (N=S0) group on the SDQ showed a significant reduction in mean scores of 2.11 points from pre-intervention to post-inter vention for Total Difficulties F(l,32)=4.60, p=.04, d=0.37 (see Table 3).  Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people showed a significant change from pre to post-intervention for the Connect-3 group. On the READ measure, results for the Connect-3 group showed a sig nificant increase in mean scores by 2.65 points on the subscale of Personal Competency from pre-intervention to post-intervention F(l,36)aa7.31, paa.01, daa0.49 (See Table 4). No other subscales on the READ were significant for the Connect-3 group.

SDQ Connect-3
The results for the Linked-Up (Naa22) group showed no significant change in scores for pre-intervention to post-intervention for either the SDQ or the READ (see Ta ble 5 & 6). However, the subscale of Prosocial Behaviour on the SDQ was approaching significance F(l,34)aa3.62, paa.07, daa0.62. There was an apparent increase in mean scores of 1.09 points from pre-intervention to post-intervention (See Table 5).     Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people

Gender Analysis
Further analysis was conducted to determine if the overall results were sig nificant for both males and females. There was little difference in gender from baseline to post-intervention in either the Connect-3 or Linked-Up group. The only significant difference was found for the Connect-3 group on the subscale of Personal Competency. Males significantly (p=.01) increased their scores from pre-intervention (M=l 9.54) to post-intervention (M=23.02).

Resilience and Adversities
As hypothesised, most subscales of READ were negatively correlated with subscales of the SDQ, with the exception of the Prosocial scale, which was sig nificantly positive (See Table 7

Attrition Rates
For the 70 participants for whom pre-intervention data from the SDQ and READ measures were available; 29 (41%) of participants had post-interven tion data available. There are also two participants in the Connect-3 group where post-intervention SDQ and READ data was available, but not their pre-intervention data. Given this low retention rate, independent-sample t-tests were conducted on each of the subscales and available demograph ics for the READ and SDQ to compare the baseline scores of the students for whom no post-intervention measures were available. The two groups were similar in all respects except for the Family Cohesion (paa.04) subscale within the READ and the Peer Problems (p=.01) and Total Difficulties (p=.02) within the SOQ (see Table 8 overleaf).

Discussion
The aim of the current study was to build on Worsley's (2014) research of the Resilience Doughnut model. Specifically, to assess the effectiveness of two programs based on the Resilience Doughnut model. The Connect-3 and Linked-Up programs are group-interventions that aim to help young people find their strengths, improve their social interactions and develop resilient thinking skills. The effectiveness of these programs was assessed by examin- ing pre-intervention and post-intervention measures of resilience, using the READ (Hjemdal et al., 2006) and adversities, using the SDQ (Goodman, 1997). The study also examined age and gender difference from pre-to post-inter vention.

Effectiveness of Resilience Doughnut Programs
Results from the Connect-3 group show that there were significant changes in their scores from pre-intervention to post-intervention. Specifically, par ticipants in the Connect-3 group significantly reduced their total difficulties score at post-intervention. They also had a significant increase in their scores for the Personal Competency subscale within the READ measure of resil ience. Further, there was an apparent decrease in the subscales of Emotional Problems and Hyperactivity that were trending toward significance. Whilst these results provide some good evidence for Connect-3 program in reducing adversities, it is important to consider the clinical relevance of the scores. In all of the SDQ subscales, the mean participant scores fell within the 'average' to 'slightly raised' descriptive categories, suggesting that the participants did Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people not have a clinically high rate of difficulties even before treatment. This is not surprising, given that the study was completed with a non-clinical population. Unlike the Connect-3 group (primary school aged students), the Linked-Up group (high school aged students), showed no significant change in scores from baseline to post-intervention. These results support the Lock and Bar rett (2003) and Barrett et al. (2006) findings, which suggest that implement ing programs with primary school-aged children appears to be more effec tive at reducing adversities than compared to high-school aged youth. Small participant numbers in the Linked-Up group may have impacted on these findings, given that there were only 22 participants at pre-intervention and seven at post-intervention. There was a non-significant increase in the Total Difficulties scores for the Linked-Up group, which appears more likely due to random variation rather than a type II error. Although these scores are based on only seven available participants, there appears to be no downward trend of the estimated marginal means from pre to post, which was apparent in the Connect-3 group.
However, in contrast to Barrett et al. (2006) findings, the results of this study found no significant difference in the changes from baseline to post-in tervention for most subscales for males and females. The only exception was in the Connect-3 group, where male scores significantly increased on the sub scale of Personal Competency from baseline to post-intervention. This unre markable finding suggests that males and females generally do not respond differently to the Resilience Doughnut programs.

Relationship Between READ and SDQ Scores
As hypothesised, there was a significant increase in the resilience measure scores (READ) and decrease in difficulties scores (SDQ) at post-intervention, as seen in the correlation matrix of the two measures (Table 7), which is con sistent with Worsley (2014) findings. However, unlike Worsley's (2014) study, a small number of the SDQ subscales did not have significant correlations against the READ subscales, such as the Hyperactivity scale. This is likely due to the type of participants within the group, who were more commonly referred for anxiety difficulties than problems with hyperactivity behaviour. In contrast to Worsley (2014) study (particularly the third case study), this research contained participants from socio-economically advantaged back grounds.
Unexpectedly, Social Competency was positively correlated with Hyper activity. This is again likely the result of the shy and anxious population. The Hyperactivity scale may be indicative of participants who were more extro-

Strengths
The current study is the first to examine the effectiveness of the Connect-3 and Linked-Up group programs based on the Resilience Doughnut model. The data collected from this study provides further insight into the factors that build resilience in young people for a well-resourced population. These findings provide the platform to conduct further study of these programs within more diverse, and less affluent populations.
Another strength of this study is that the Connect-3 and Linked-Up pro grams are innovative, strengths-based programs, which aim to build resil ience in a variety of domains, such as community and peer factors. Unlike other programs that may solely focus on developing an individual's charac teristics (e.g., coping skills), the Resilience Doughnut programs are designed to engage young people in connecting with their family, community and other external resources around them. The READ subscales provide some measure of these resources, however future research could focus more specifically on how this broader view of resilience impacts on the effectiveness of the pro grams.
Finally, the difficulty in obtaining post-intervention scores for the READ and SDQ measures highlights the importance of having good quality assur ance within the private clinic. This study has been the catalysis for improv ing the data collection system, including identifying technical issues with the computer-based program. Stricter procedures for the collection and record ing of data will assist the clinic to conduct further rigorous research on the programs run at the centre. It will also allow the clinic to continue to contrib ute to the growing field of resilience-based research.

Limitations
There were a number of limitations to this research. Firstly, there were only a small number of participants within the Linked-Up group. These smaller numbers may have impacted on the ability to find significant change in scores on the READ and SDQ over time. Further research within the adolescent pop ulation is needed to assess this more thoroughly.
Another limitation of the program was the small amount of post-inter vention data available. There were only 29 data points available for post-in tervention analysis; however; this is not a direct indication of dropout rates, Evaluating the effectiveness of a resilience program for children and youg people as most participants completed the program in full. Rather, this low number could be due to technical issues, with the failure of the computer system to save the data properly. It could also have been due to some participants not attending the follow-up session, which is where most of the post-intervention data was collected. Attempts were made to get participants to complete the post-intervention questionnaires at a later date, however this was not always possible. The results from the independent-sample t-tests showed that only Family Cohesion, Peer Problems and Total Difficulties subscales were signifi cant for participants who did not have data for post-intervention. It is unclear what may have contributed to this; however, it could be that participants who had more limited familial support were unable to attend the follow-up session for post-intervention data collection, as they had significantly lower Family Cohesion baseline scores. Alternatively, it could be that these participants did not attend the follow-up session because they did not need the intervention, as they had significantly lower scores for Peer Problems and Total Difficulties.
Another limitation was the small amount of demographic and descriptive data available to analyse the participant population. Specifically, no data was available to examine how many participants had completed previous inter ventions, or how many participants were getting other psychological inter vention in conjunction with participating in the programs, particularly given that many referrals to the program came from psychologists. Similarly, there is a limitation for participants who self-referred to the program, as often self-referrals only capture a population that is likely to be interested and more engaged in the program and therefore may bias the results toward a positive response to the program.
Finally, the design of the current research presents a significant limitation. The current design was a pre-post test, with no control group. This limits the conclusions that can be drawn from the findings for the general effectiveness of the program.

Recommendations for Future Research
The current study examined the effect of the Connect-3 and Linked-Up pro grams on improving resilience scores with a small, homogenous population that is socio-economically advantaged, and therefore well resourced enough to already be resilient, as suggested by Ungar (2008). Future research may be interested in examining the effectiveness ofConnect-3 and Linked-Up groups within a population that has increased adversity, as it may yield more clin ically significant results. It could also be interesting to examine how these programs compare with other international resilience programs, such as the Penn Resiliency Program (Gillham, et al., 2007).
Another area for future research could be to examine how these pro grams help to engage young people with the resources around them, such as their family and community, and how in turn, these resources build a young person's resilience. For example, the programs were designed to engage the young person's family through providing parent information sessions. The family and community were also involved in homework tasks, such as the kindness project, where participants had to develop a project that connected themselves with their available social resources (e.g., school, sporting club, family, faith-based community). Future research could aim to examine the impact of these connections on building resilience. This is particularly impor tant as increasingly resilience is being defined as a process of overcoming adversity through using both individual and environmental resources (Ungar at al., 2008;Windle et al., 2011).
Finally, future studies should consider changing the design of the study. Rather than using pre-post test design, future research could consider using randomised assignment training and control groups. This would ensure more statistically robust results, which may provide wider scope for the clinical implications of the programs.

Conclusion
The current research offers a perspective on building resilience in non-clin ical child and adolescent populations through the Connect-3 and Linked-Up programs. These two 6-week programs, which are based on the Resilience Doughnut model, have demonstrated the ability to build personal compe tency and reduce total difficulties within a for young people aged between 8-12 years-old. However, more research is required to examine the impact of the programs within non-clinical and clinical population samples. Megan Valentine is a research statistician with the Statistical Support Ser vice at the University of Newcastle, and has assisted with study design and analysis across several disciplines, predominantly in Psychology and Special Education. Mrs Valentine is also a tutor in statistics for science students and public health for students studying medicine.

Lyn Worsley is a Clinical
Actually it was partly Professor Nicholas Procter (who is hosting our confer ence at the University of South Australia in a couple of months). In 1993, I was doing the first year of a nursing degree and Nicholas was one of my tutors. ln July, we both ended up at a party where we didn't know anyone else so we sat together and chatted. Nicholas asked me if I had any thoughts about my future nursing career and what direction I might like to go in. Really, l had no idea. He then asked if I had thought about mental health and I replied "I have never thought about it, and I never will". At the end of 1996, I was fin ishing my graduate year and a 3 month contract became available to work in a mental health ward, There were 20 of us finishing at the same time and we all declined the offer. I then realised that I would be unemployed at the end of the year so I took the position, just so I could say that I had something to put on my resume. Three months turned into nine months, which turned into my career. Since then I have had several jobs where I was the only applicant, jobs that turned out to be absolutely perfect for me but in which no one else was My guess is that Solution-Focused wasn't in your nursing training, so how did you come to embrace the Solution-Focused approach?
It certainly wasn't in any of my training. I had been working for several years in emergency departments and I was thinking of doing a project of some sort but didn't know what. I decided that I would try to define the approach that we were using. We had a very small team that consisted of a psychiatrist, a psychiatry registrar, and a nurse. While it was medically led, we weren't really working under a traditional medical model. In fact, I remember one occasion when Prof Kalucy (our psychiatrist) was called into an urgent meeting with the head of surgery, the hospital risk manager and a couple of others to dis cuss an urgent surgical case with a patient who was also under the mental health act. Prof saw me walk past and called me into to room to ask my opin ion. I made a couple of suggestions then left. Later, the head surgeon asked Prof why he had called me into the room and asked my opinion, and Prof replied, "that's just what we do". We had a team with a very flat hierarchy and, without knowing it, we were very "client centred" even though that term wasn't in common use.
Brief Therapy approaches previously had some presence in mainstream mental health in South Australia, in contrast to the rest of Australia -I'm thinking of the Brief Therapy program within child & adolescent mental health in the 1990s and early 2000s (see references). What drew your atten tion to brief therapy?
Working on this project, I was looking at brief therapy and how our approach might align with other brief therapies. That's when I stumbled upon SFBT -it was nothing like what we were actually doing but it instantly made sense to me. For years I had taken a not knowing stance, mostly because I just didn't know so I couldn't tell someone what to do anyway. Whenever anyone asked me, "What should I do?" I would be thinking, "Hell, I don't know what you should do" so I would just say, "That's tough, I don't know, but what do you think you could do?" SFBT then gave me some more reason and structure to the conversation. Why should I be telling someone what to do, when I can get them to tell me what they should do? I later discovered that Tim Wand (mental health nurse practitioner; Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney) was also using SFBT in his ED and out patient clinic. I had known Tim for several years and he is one of the most respected mental health nurses in the country. Tim put me onto you (Michael) and I later headed over to Sydney to attend a workshop at the Brief Therapy Institute of Sydney and also catch up with Tim in the ED. In the last few years can you think of an example, early in your use of Solution-Focused, that really convinced you of its usefulness in the mental health context?
Yes, absolutely. The very first patient I tried Solution-Focused with. He was a SO-something-year-old man who presented to the ED with shortness of breath. He was divorced and his two adolescent sons lived with their mother 2 hours drive away. He had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer; was unable to drive any more and was connected to an oxygen bottle 24/7. The man was seen by the ED doctor and referred for a mental health assessment due to possible depression. That was the first "miracle" -that the man pre sented to the ED because of his trouble breathing, but the ED doctor actu ally picked up that he might be depressed and that mental health assistance might be helpoful!

What made you decide to try out your new Solution-Focused skills with this man?
The reason I chose this man first was that I was looking for someone to exper iment on, but I wanted someone that I didn't have to do my normal traditional assessment. I discovered that the man had had a full assessment at another hospital just a couple of weeks before, was diagnosed with dysthymia (I'm not sure why they would call it that but that's another story), and had the appointment to see the hospice psychiatrist already. That was enough rea sons to give myself"permission" to experiment. When I saw him, 1 simply tried to have a conversation using the little bit of Solution-Focused knowledge that I had He initially presented as flat, low mood, low energy, low motivation. His self-care was a little poor and he couldn't see much hope for the future. The focus of my discussion was try ing to establish both how he has coped so far, as well as his best hopes for the remainder of his life given his circumstances. During our discussion he told me that he was a car enthusiast and had a very nice old car sitting in the shed which he was unable to drive. Without me offering any suggestions, but using SFBT techniques, he was able to work out his desire and hopes. His one desire was to be able to teach his 16-year-old son to drive before he passed away. We explored what this might "look like" -he would contact his ex-wife, who would drop his children off on a Friday night, he would give his son driving lessons and do things like drive to Brighton and get ice cream, and

SO, what happened?
I didn't see this man again, but always remembered his story. A couple of years later, I was talking about his story while I was running a SFBT workshop. One of the participants told me that she knew this man as she was working as a mental health nurse at the hospice at the time. She asked me, "do you want to know what happenedr and she told me, "He taught his son how to drive.n You currently work in the Emergency Department of a large city hospital.

What does your work involve?
My work in the ED now is more than just doing assessments although that is still a large part of what I must do. I often say that "people don't come to the ED because they are having a good day." While the traditional approach would be to find out all of the reasons why they are not having a good day, I know that doing an assessment will not actually make them feel better. My job is more about trying to turn people around. I might only have one chance or one interaction so I have to make it a good one. Some of the people I met in Canada such as Lance Taylor, as well as the team in Red Deer refer to this as a balanced assessment (Wright, Badescha and Schepp, 2014). This makes absolute sense to me in this environment.

How does using the Solution-Focused approach make a difference in this context?
Incorporating Solution-Focused work into my day has made a huge difference both to the work I do and to my nursing career. I have been in this position for 10 years and it's rare for someone not to have been burnt out in that time. When you spend 12 hours a day listening to, and taking on, people's problems it can really wear you down. On top of that there are the political, environ mental and time pressures in a department that sees about 80,000 patients a year, and in being attached to a hospital that is always at capacity. Then I come home to a busy house only to have my wife and kids wanting to tell me all about their problems! The time spent doing Solution-Focused work is more than just time spent not listening to problems. It is a chance for me to do something therapeutic, to help people, to remind me why I got into nursing in the first place. My patients usually walk away feeling good, and so do I!

Interview with David Hains
Tell me about the ED client who best illustrates how SF makes a difference in that context.
Mary was a SO-something-year-old woman from the Adelaide Hills. She was previously a hard working woman in a traditional eastern European fam ily. She was house proud, spent a lot of time cooking, keeping house, raising children, etc and helping her husband on their farm. Mary had an accident and badly broke her leg. She required surgery and internal fixation. Her leg got infected and she remained in hospital for six months on the strongest antibiotics we could serve up. On discharge, she continued on antibiotics and strong analgesia. Mary frequently represented to the ED saying the pain was uncontrollable and that she thought the infection had returned. She would be seen by the ED doctor who would not be able to do anything for her and they would spend the rest of the day trying to discharge her. She would usually refuse to go home as, far as she was concerned, nothing had been done and she was convinced that the infection had returned. The ED became increas ingly frustrated with her reappearance. Over her subsequent presentations the "infection" and pain seemed to migrate up her legs, into her back, her abdomen, chest, neck, head ...

How did you become involved?
The mental health team was not involved until she said the magic word -sui cide. "I might as well kill myself the pain is so bad". To the ED staff, this was their chance to wash their hands of her as this was now a psychiatric problem. Mary was happy to talk to me but didn't see that I had anything to offer as she believed she needed to be readmitted to the orthopaedic ward and needed stronger analgesia. At our first meeting. I must have spent the first hour lis tening to her problems and the second hour trying to extricate myself from the room, then referred her back to the ED saying there was nothing I could do. Mary must have had a copy of my roster since she only presented on the days that I was working, and I was usually the one that had to see her. Mary was hard work, and I later discovered that she had already burned through two different psychiatrists. I tried intervening a couple of times without any success. She was absolutely focused on the pain. I describe Mary as being like a black hole -when you were in her presence, all of your energy was sucked out of you and by the time you left the room you would feel completely drained but there was no change in Mary. I decided that I had nothing to lose so I would try to put into practice my new SFBT skills. I checked with her psychiatrist first, not wanting to step on any toes, but she said "PLEASE DO ANYTHING!".

So, what "anything" did you do?
At the time Mary next came to hospital. I was trying to get my head around exceptions and how to ask questions to find them. I knew that the problem couldn't be happening 100% of the time but it was hard because all I knew about Mary so far was that she was housebound (apart from coming to the ED), could not care for herself, could not cook, could not clean, could not keep house, etc. As far as I knew, the only thing she could do was to come to the ED. That is, until during my SFBT conversation, when Mary disclosed that she went to church EVERY DAY. Mary told me that she loves going to church, that she has many friends there, she has a strong faith, that they sometimes have lunch afterwards etc. We were able to identify that the pain was much less at church (or no pain at all) and she was able to cope with life and do activities. I also heard that, after church, many of the women would stay for lunch, and on the way home Mary might do something else such as go shopping. We were able to identify some strengths (e.g. that she could soldier on) and then identify other things that she could do. It was a very positive conversation.
Then the most amazing thing happened. Mary stood up, and for the first time initiated her own discharge. We walked out together, she shook my hand, and we said our goodbyes. Then the second most amazing thing happened: I returned to my office and realised that, for the first time, I had beern able to talk to Mary and hadn't left feeling like all of the life had been sucked out of me. I actually felt good. Mary left with a feeling of hope for the future, and I left with a rejuvenation in my nursing career which has carried on and is strengthened every time that I do SFBT with a client.

Did you see Mary again?
I have seen Mary a few times since then, but only bumping into her when she has presented for medical or physical issues. The frequency in her ED pres entations decreased straight away. The ED doctors have not seen the need to refer her for a mental health assessment again. I note that a psychiatrist has readmitted her back to the inpatient unit once or twice, but I assume that was because their problem-based approach and focus on medication must have identified something that I didn't see the need for.

You won a South Australian Premier's award for your work as a mental health nurse. What was it that got you that award?
Each year the SA Department of Health offers five scholarships for nurses to travel overseas to study something that might benefit nurses and the health  Wand (2010Wand ( , 2013, but there was not much happening in South Australia. The application process involved researching what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, then making contact with the relevant peo ple around the world, planning the trip in detail and then submitting quite a detailed application, including demonstrating that it would benefit local health services. So, where did you go?
I was trying to find somewhere that was using SFBT in acute mental health services across various teams. After contacting various people in Europe and North America as well as the online SF List, I received an email from Phil Wright in Red Deer, Alberta saying. "I think we might have what you are look ing for". My first thought was, "Great, but where the hell is Red Deer?". I went to Google and found the city homepage which told me that it was forecast to be -10°C on that day. I said to Phil that I wouldn't usually get out of bed if it wasn't going to be +10° at home, to which he replied, "If you come here you are going to spend a lot of time in bed". I held out for a while, waiting for con tact from a service on a tropical island in the South Pacific but didn't happen. Phil put me in contact with Lance Taylor, Dene Shipowick, Darcy Jessen and others in Alberta, and I was eventually able to get a plan and an application worthy of a scholarship.
And you ended up in Nova Scotia? That's the other side of the country! I timed my trip so that it would coincide with the Solution Focused Brief Ther apy Association conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, then asked my boss if I could stay a little longer and attend the conference (conferences were not covered by the scholarship). My boss agreed to pay for part of the expenses, and SFBTA provided a free ticket to the conference. While I was there I was also able to attend a 2 day workshop with Lance Taylor and Heather Fiske, and got to meet some really interesting people like Elliott Connie & Adam Foerer, Frank Thomas. Jeff Chang. Joel Simon, and also Harvey Ratner from the UK and Ella de Jong from the Netherlands and so many others. I never would have imagined meeting so many passionate SF people in one place.
Given that my work in ED often involves working with suicidal people, it was a privilege to meet Heather; who is probably THE international expert on using SFBT with acutely suicidal people (Fiske, 2008). When I was at Heath er's house for the post-conference party, I got to tell Joel of my story with the terminally ill man (above). Part of the reason I was able to talk to this man was because the first SF book I had read (the only one at that time) was Joel's book on using SFBT in end of life and grief counselling (Simon, 2009). I think Joel was on the verge of crying when I told him the story. He said that he wrote the book because he thought it was a good idea and it worked, but it is only after hearing stories like mine that he knows it was all worthwhile.

What was a highlight from the trip?
Amazingly I had been using SFBT for a few years but as I was on my own in Adelaide f had never seen anyone do a live session. In Canada I was able to sit in on many sessions and for me I was about as excited to do this as I was to read about the early days in Milwaukee where people could observe and discuss sessions and learn as they were happening. We just don't have that culture here. f saw a lot of sessions over a few weeks and really enjoyed it. On my last day in the Red Deer Community Mental Health Clinic it was a Tuesday and they run a solution focused drop in clinic. There were about 15 staff who all met in a room and waited for clients to walk in. We then divided up where one would interview and several would observe. The first client arrived about an hour before the clinic opened -it was about -2° outside and I just could not believe it.
After observing all of these interviews, I was amazed at how all of these clinics seemed to attract all of the nice people. Why don't nice people ever come to my ED? I only ever get to see the ratbags, the PD's, the drunks and druggies, the malingerers, etc, but f never get to see the nice people. The last client in Red Deer was a young man who was brought in by his girlfriend. They were both drinking every day and there was a lot of conflict in their relationship. However doing the interview I heard that this man was training to be a chef, that he had just won a big competition and he as in training to go to Mauritius for a world cooking competition. I heard about his strengths, resources and ambitions, and the clinician was really skilled in getting his vision for his preferred future. I was feeling really positive about this young man's future, and again I was left to wonder why I never saw men like that in my ED.
Then I had a big revelation. The week before this interview the man had attended the Red Deer ED. He was drunk, he had had a big fight with his girl- friend and in the process had smashed a beer bottle and had ripped open his hand. I imagine he would have been belligerent, perhaps aggressive. We would have identified his alcohol addiction, his impulsive behaviour, domes tic violence, and perhaps even a personality disorder. We would have sug gested he see the drug and alcohol service and anger management program, and would have been 100% certain that he would not have attended. I then realise that the outcome will be determined by the questions that we ask. If we look for problems, we will only find problems. If we look for solutions we will find solutions.

And what else?
Another highlight was seeing Solution-Focused group work in both Red Deer and Ponoka. I had never been involved in group work, and I wasn't looking for it while I was away, but the things they were doing there were unbelievably simple and yet so very effective. I asked the participants why they would leave their home on a Monday night when it was -1° outside. They unaminously said that they got so much out of it that couldn't miss it. Likewise, in the inpa tient rehab unit in Ponoka, I saw the patients turning up to the group 15 min utes early and they sat there with their workbooks on their lap all ready to go. I never would have imagined that patients in a rehab ward would be early for anything, but again they said they got so much out of the group that they wouldn't want to miss it. Since I've returned to Adelaide Solution-Focused groups have been implemented in Noarlunga Hospital with great success.
You are THE key person in organising the 2017 Australian Solution-Focused conference. What are your "best hopes" from the conference?
Coming back to Adelaide and having an offer from you (Michael) to hold the Australasian SFBT conference was just a dream for me. After attending the 2nd MSFBT conference in Sydney I wondered if we would ever have enough interest in SFBT in Adelaide to host a conference, and a couple of years later here we are. By the time this is published the conference will probably be over, so one of my hopes is that we will still be able to talk about the conference in a positive light after July. There are a lot of things I am hoping for with the conference. Firstly, the growth of SF work in Adelaide has occurred mostly in acute mental health areas, so I would love for clinicians here to be able to show that off to the rest of the world, which will in turn inspire the people here to continue their work. Secondly, I would like to see the conference kick start some growth in SF work outside of the mental health world -such as schools -I know there is a bit happening with some school counsellors but I would love to see more. On a more personal note, 1 would like to learn about using Solution-Focused approaches within organisations, so I am really look ing forward to hearing about the work of Sophie Giesler and others. Finally, I would like to understand just a little about the philosophical underpinnings of SFBT, that Dan Hutto writes about-his work looks impressive, but I just have absolutely no idea of what he is talking about!

And you've gone on to establish a South Australian SFBT interest group.
A few years ago I was asked if I would run an occasional 1 day workshop on SFBT to staff in the public mental health service here in Adelaide. The workshops seemed to go well and, after a couple of years, I had a few people approach me asking how we could learn more and spread the word on how good this was in the mental health service. We decided to have a meeting and put together a few ideas. There were 5 of us at the first meeting. and we decided to set up a regular get-together for education, support, peer supervi sion, and promotion of SFBT. We decided to establish ourselves through the Mental Health Professionals Network for the simple reason that they pro vided money (for catering and expenses) as well as a little admin support (for advertising. attendance lists, and certificates of attendance). We ran our first meeting in April 2016 and have met every 3 months since then. We now have a membership of over 100 names, with people from both public and private health as well as school counsellors and NGO workers. A few months ago, the South Australian SF Community of Practice formally affiliated with AASFBT.

Finally, what's this "Left Turn"?
With a growing interest in SFBT in Adelaide, I was getting enquiries from different organisations to run training. As some of these people could not access the normal training I was offering through the public mental health service I decided to set up a small business so I could provide this training in a private capacity. Hence Left Turn Solutions was born. ("When things aren't going right -turn left"). It's not enough work for me to be able to give up my day job, but the ability to do this has meant more people in Adelaide can access Solution-Focused training. I have run workshops for the Mental Illness Fellowship of South Australia (a non-government organisation) as well as the Southern Adelaide Complex Care Team (a non-mental health team who assist with complex multi-dimensional problems). I have future workshops planned with mental health and non-mental health teams. Words are weasely, they are like snakes. They slither about and we hardly notice them. They sneak around barely visible and yet as they go they can change everything in their wake. Let's take the little word 'get'. It's a small word, an everyday sort of word, not the sort of word to which we would pay much attention. It is a workaday word that pops out of our mouths, a word whose definition we would never look up, a taken-for-granted word, an unshowy sort of word that lives in the shadows doing its work quietly, never attracting attention to itself. It is, to all intents and purposes, a modest word.
But the word 'get' is also a trouble-maker, a stirrer, a rapscallion, a verita ble rascal of a word. It is a Trojan Horse carrying within those three letters a much larger set of assumptions, assumptions which can derail our attempts to work in a Solution-Focused way with our clients. Let's consider the fol lowing apparently entirely inoffensive statements "J was trying to get him to describe his preferred future" or "I wanted to get her to be aware of her strengths". So what's the problem with these statements? Both seem like good ideas. Describing preferred futures and 'noticing and naming' strengths are both processes that lie at the heart of the Solution-Focused approach-aren't they? Shouldn' t we try to get people to do these things? And the answer of course is no we should not. We should never try to get people to do things. As soon as we are in the getting business we are using force. And as soon as we use force then we create the likelihood that the client will respond with what we could describe as 'counter-force' or, more commonly 'resistance'.
But what alternative words do we have? It is not easy. The language becomes clunky and awkward. It is less than perfect. However, I would choose to say that we 'invite' people. Every question is an 'invitation' . We are asking questions that 'invite' people to describe things. When we use force and the force is resisted the logic of the language suggests to us that we should use 72 -Journal of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy -Vol 2, No 2, 2016 82 Journal of Solution Focused Practices, Vol. 2 [2020], Iss. 2, Art. 11 https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/journalsfp/vol2/iss2/11 Forum more force. That's how force operates. I do it to you. However if an invitation is turned down the word suggests that I may need to have another look at the invitation. Is the invitation attractive enough, is it timely, is it interesting to the recipient? How could I change the invitation such that the chances of acceptance are increased? After all I cannot make anyone accept an invitation.
That is not what the word means.
Many thanks to the participants on this week's Solution Focused Super vision and Consultation programme at BRIEF in London for triggering this reflection.

Comment from Don Coles
Thank you, Evan, for these helpful reflections on our use of language, and implications in therapy of the difference between 'getting' and 'inviting' something from someone. I agree an approach of invitation is clearly more consistent with the collaborative, meaning emergent, process of Solution-Fo cused practice.
Your comments got me wondering about the possible effects of power dif ferentials as these words are used. I'm picturing an employee who has been 'invited' by a manager to consider a particular course of action -it may be couched in collaborative terms, but it could be a direction in disguise. It may not be helpful for the employee to 'decline' the invitation and it would at least be reasonable to have a clarifying discussion about what the invitation means, if there is some ambiguity. At its worst, an invitation can be a threat. Parents become masters of framing directions in the form of invitations. In therapy, there is a different sort of power differential, but how do we take care that our 'invitations' are not read or received in way that is not too far from 'getting'? We could have the same discussion about the use of the terms 'request' or 'ask' -close relatives of'invite'.
This discussion does help us to reflect on influence. Say a client does something that I ask them -for example I might invite (ask? request?) them to think about what resource or ability they utilised to manage a problem and they come back to the next session having done that. What's the connection between me having asked them that, and them having taken it up? Whether I think I 'invited' them to consider this, or I 'got' them to consider it, what actually was or is the mechanism? Perhaps more importantly, did their con sideration of that question actually assist them in the work towards the goals they are expressing in the therapy? We may be able to come to some sense of how the invitation process (or the getting process) actually works, but did it lead to something useful for the client?

Comment from Thorana Nelson
I so totally agree with Evan's ideas here that it's like trying to describe air. Of course! Of course not! Why would one? Why not? On and on. The notion of 'inviting' has so totally taken over my way of thinking that I surprise myself when I must step outside of my cozy world and look at it from a different angle, or catch myself by thinking I know what the client's air is like.
A client once said to me, uhe was in the living room ff with great emotion. "He was in the living room!!!" What does that mean?-That one is easy. How ever, another client once said to me, "I had to take out the garbage" and I didn't even blink. A student challenged me on this: What was my assumption? The garbage needed to go out? Someone else should take out the garbage? Oh! Back to inviting. When I remember that clients invite me to cooperate in different ways (de Shazer, 1984), and I don't take offense or assume I know what they mean, it's easier for me to invite them to ... describe further, explain meaning. scale their position, ask about exceptions, ask relationship ques tions, etc. The context, including the client's words, helps me decide which questions to ask, but I don't pretend to know the answers until I hear the cli ent's reply. I don't even know for certain what question the client heard! How ever, if I take offense at the invitation, or allow my assumptions to kick me in the a$$, I'm more likely to attempt to 'get' something. As if I have more than the barest (and perhaps mistaken) clue what's going on in the client's world.
So, here's to invitations -the ones we get from clients and the ones we give them.

Commnent from Ian Johnsen
Evan's blog post reminds me of the discussions my colleagues and I have had over many years -conversations about the difference between manip ulation and influence, understanding how expert versus local knowledge is important, thinking about unilateral versus mutual processes and how we, as human beings, think, feel, act, (respond) to these things (manipulation, expert knowledge, unilateral power).
Evan invites us to look at what we as solution-focused actors actually do in counselling or therapy conversations -including what words we use. "Modest" words are often the most powerful because they work in the "shad ows", unseen. Do we "get" or "invite" clients to talk about their hopes? Do we work "with" or "for" clients?
I'm reminded of a quote from Steve de Shazer, now dimly remembered, something about how each word is like a locomotive engine, pulling along freight loads of meaning. We might talk about what a particular word means and try to fix it in place for a moment, for the duration of our conversation, but it is difficult to "fix" and "foreclose" meaning in a "once and for all" kind of way. It is not only everyday words like 'get' that work like Trojan Horses, indeed professional discourse maintains a mask of authority and a claim to legitimacy by 'fixing' what words can be said to represent or mean. For some of the implications of this see for example, Coates and Wade (2007). Wittgen stein, who Steve talked about often, used to say that the meaning of a word is in how it is used.
This fixing of meaning is problematic even in some of the discourses we identify as 'progressive'. For example in the 'strengths based movement' and in the various discourses about resiliency, professional discourse works to reify and nominalise what is fluid and active. So, we come to talk of people as 'being resilient' rather than understanding that resilience is something people do, a social fact, not an individual trait but a community achievement. And we come to measure strengths as if people have them or not, as if they exist as an entity, in themselves, something to be normatively quantified.
The word "get" can reveal a kind of posture that amounts to using "force", as Evan points out. But with the word "invite", we can also conceal that we do Published by Digital Scholarship@UNLV, 2020 Forum indeed use influence and "power". The therapist, like the doctor or teacher or lawyer, is usually the person who assumes the right-or position -to ask most of the questions. This in itself means that we do more than "invite".
Every question works like a flashlight in a dark room, no matter how col laborative it seems to be. It "asks" a person to look here, not so much there, and talk in this way, not so much that way. Conversation analysts talk about "sequential constraints". A question imposes "constraints", useful and socially just constrains ideally, but constraints nonetheless. If I ask, "What is your name?", and you reply, "Manchester United", we have a small social prob lem. The asking of a question "constrains" a person to provide a "relevant" response -that is, a response that is relevant to the content of the question. To use Steve's analogy, questions are the locomotives that pull the freight.
It is precisely because conversation works in this way that Evan's caution about the word "get", and by extension other similar terms, is so important. Because as therapists we do exercise influence and power, it is up us to be vigilant about our intentions and how we represent our actions.
As Evan suggests, in Solution-Focused work we are always guided by our client's hopes. In dialogue with our clients we seek to build as detailed a description as possible of these hopes. A description of all the things, past, present and future that have been, are, or could be in the clients life that are signs that what the client hopes for is, either to some extent already happen ing, or possible. As this therapy is not about our expert understanding of the individual mind, or our clever interventions or other special knowledge we can impart, in Solution-Focused work we hope our conversations will "leave no footprints". We trust in the process and we trust in the pre-existing com petence of our clients.
A quick story-I attended the BRIEF summer school some years back with Evan, Harvey and Chris and I was particularly struck by the 'rotating interviewer' exercise. This was a group exercise with pairs of role-playing 'interviewers and interviewee's -an exercise based on an original exercise from Peter Szabo. I think that understanding how this exercise works is a big part of understanding how Solution-Focused therapy works. The exercise involves asking a few key questions about 1. Hopes (or miracles), 2. What's working already? 3. The sense of how far toward realising hopes a person is (scaling), and 4. What the next small signs of realising hopes will be? Okay, pre t ty standard stuff in the Solution-Focused canon; however, in this exercise at every new question the interviewer changes and the interviewee is asked the next question by a new interviewer. What is important here is that the 'cli ent' /interviewee is able to continue to build detailed description around their hopes and of course any 'agenda', 'footprint', 'force' or 'expert knowledge' of 76 -Journal of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy -Vol 2, No 2, 2016 86 Journal of Solution Focused Practices, Vol. 2 [2020], Iss. 2, Art. 11 https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/journalsfp/vol2/iss2/11 Forum the interviewer is shown to be, at the very least, unnecessary.
This exercise highlights that counselling requires expertise but only a particular type of expertise, that of understanding the process that brings description alive for the interviewee. Thus, of course, any other interviewer with the same expertise of this conversational process will be, for the pur poses of detailed description around client's best hopes, equally useful.
Of course, this is an exercise tailored to just some elements of what hap pens in a Solution-Focused counselling conversation. One key element that we are missing in this exercise is that of 'Solution-Focused listening'. It is after all the listening for specific words and turns of phrase used by the inter viewee that must determine what is reiterated and woven into the conversa tional process.
Finally, after reading Evan's post, I was prompted to reflect on the difficul ties I sometimes face when in family work and I am required to respond to the competing agendas of multiple people in the one room. Sometimes I feel less like a partner in constructing a useful dialogue and more like a police officer directing traffic. I like to think that I only invite description but what about when others in the conversation really do want a son or daughter or partner to 'get' something or when there are multiple descriptions to be teased out. At those times I'm aware, usually post session of having shared one story too many, pushed one barrow too many, or aligned myself with one person's hope more than another's. Well that's a theme to keep returning to in supervision!