As the community of people interested in SI grows, we are so curious to learn about what you do and how SI fits into your work.
Over the past summer, we received a note from a Danish psychologist Martin Helfer asking whether it would be all right to translate the Simple Interactions Tool into Danish for training. The answer is of course, yes! We asked Martin if he could share a description of how SI fits into his work.
A few months later, Martin kindly shared with us a detailed description of where he works, what the relational and developmental dimensions are in that work, and how SI fits in. We find it fascinating. As you will see in his full article, Martin works in residential treatment facilities for children in Denmark. It’s a setting that supports children with severe relational, behavioral, and emotional challenges. The program uses a treatment approach that integrates daily living with therapeutic interventions to create structure and foster connection. It’s a process where professional expertise and relational care intersects in a deep way.
Over the past summer, we received a note from a Danish psychologist Martin Helfer asking whether it would be all right to translate the Simple Interactions Tool into Danish for training. The answer is of course, yes! We asked Martin if he could share a description of how SI fits into his work.
A few months later, Martin kindly shared with us a detailed description of where he works, what the relational and developmental dimensions are in that work, and how SI fits in. We find it fascinating. As you will see in his full article, Martin works in residential treatment facilities for children in Denmark. It’s a setting that supports children with severe relational, behavioral, and emotional challenges. The program uses a treatment approach that integrates daily living with therapeutic interventions to create structure and foster connection. It’s a process where professional expertise and relational care intersects in a deep way.
Martin has integrated SI in the six-year internal training program for therapists. His work reminded us of another ongoing partnership we have with the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University over the last decade. That is a multi-decade training and technical assistance effort for residential care programs in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and other countries.
Because Simple Interactions is not a prescriptive program, but rather an adaptive approach, there are many ways that people have chosen to interpret and implement it around the globe. What remains at its core is that Simple Interactions gives us a strengths-based lens through which we can notice, describe, discover, appreciate, and grow relational practice. We are able to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, everyday interactions between human beings. By sharing these stories of practice, we hope to showcase the many different ways people take the ideas behind SI to the many different places they live and work.
Read Martin's full article here.
Because Simple Interactions is not a prescriptive program, but rather an adaptive approach, there are many ways that people have chosen to interpret and implement it around the globe. What remains at its core is that Simple Interactions gives us a strengths-based lens through which we can notice, describe, discover, appreciate, and grow relational practice. We are able to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, everyday interactions between human beings. By sharing these stories of practice, we hope to showcase the many different ways people take the ideas behind SI to the many different places they live and work.
Read Martin's full article here.