Devon AFT and the Dillington Committee are pleased to present the Annual South West Family Therapy Forum (Dillington) Conference at the Rougemount Hotel, Exeter, on Friday 5th December, 2025! Rougemont hotel has excellent travel connections with the train station right opposite and if people still need to drive, there are 3 park and ride services into the city centre which is a short walk to the Hotel.

To open the conference this year we are really pleased to welcome David Pocock, systemic family therapist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who introduces us to critical realism – a powerful yet accessible philosophical framework – as a resource for systemic practitioners seeking deeper theoretical grounding, better integration of research and practice, and a more robust account of change.  We also have a full programme of creative, interesting and thought-provoking workshops kindly offered for the conference by our fellow systemic therapists (i.e. you!)

The price is held again this year and includes lunch and beverages. There will be plenty of opportunities for catching up and networking during lunch, coffee, and during afternoon tea and cakes.

Krisztina Palko, Secretary, Caz Brown, Chair and Maria Joy, Treasurer

Keynote presentation:  

The System Beneath the Surface: How Critical Realism Can Deepen Family Therapy Practice

David Pocock, Systemic Family Therapist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Overview:

In a world increasingly marked by complexity, fragmentation, and competing narratives, systemic family therapists continue to offer some of the most nuanced, relationally-attuned forms of psychological help. But as theory and practice evolve, so too should the philosophical foundations on which we build our clinical thinking. In this keynote, David introduces critical realism – a powerful yet accessible philosophical framework – as a resource for systemic practitioners seeking deeper theoretical grounding, better integration of research and practice, and a more robust account of change.

What is Critical Realism?

Critical realism, originally developed by philosopher Roy Bhaskar, offers a systemic way of understanding the world that affirms both the reality of underlying structures (such as power, attachment strategies, scripts, triangulations, and socio-cultural systems) and the significance of narrative meaning-making and human agency. It bridges the often-polarized terrain between positivist empiricism and postmodern constructionism, providing a “third way” that is especially relevant to therapists working with the rich, multi-layered complexity of family systems.

Systemic therapy has always been alive to context, relationship, and pattern. But questions persist:

• How do we justify our interventions in the face of multiple truths?
• Can we account for both lived experience and structural realities like inequality, trauma, or intergenerational transmission?
• What kind of knowledge do we produce in therapy – and how can it be both rigorously grounded and meaningfully personal?

Who is this for?

This keynote is for systemic therapists, supervisors, trainees, researchers, and anyone curious about enriching their practice with fresh philosophical insight. Whether you are grounded in traditional systemic models or working at the edges of contemporary integrative practice, critical realism offers a way to think more clearly about what we do, why it works, and how change happens.

Palgrave is offering 20% discount on David’s 2024 book, Expanding the Limits of Individual and Family Therapies: A Critical Realise Approach. Pick up a flyer on the day.

*Please note that David has Long Covid-ME/CFS, which regrettably means that he is unable to attend in person. Although delivered remotely the keynote will, however, be live and interactive.

A delicious lunch and all refreshments throughout the day are included in the price. The conference provides a great opportunity for networking and you will receive a certificate for 7 hours CPD.

Prices held for another record year!  Price for the day: £85; Student: £75

Please email your application form as soon as possible to SWFTF2012@gmail.com and we will provide payment details. PLEASE NOTE: BOOKINGS WILL ONLY BE CONFIRMED WITH PAYMENT.  Please indicate on the application form which workshops you would like to attend in the morning and afternoon.

Programme

Welcome, registration, coffee and snack from 9am

Keynote start time: 09:30am sharp, please be seated ready. 

2025 Workshops

Morning Workshops  11:45 – 13:00

Title 1: Spiralling

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now… (Bob Dylan)

Presenter: Angus Crutchfield 

The metaphor of systemic therapy as engaging in multiple dances has often struck me as a useful description of how I operate. As I have aged and practised independently in a range of refreshingly new contexts, I’ve honed and enriched my practice through meshing with neglected aspects of myself.  I have been fortunate to savour reconnections with people known previously, enjoying new dances with familiar partners who have themselves evolved: nothing stands entirely still. Kinetic energy abounds…  

The intention with this workshop is to review rhythms, blues and joys with the backdrop of an art installation I prepared earlier this year to be presented at the AFT annual conference in Brighton: a weave of the professional and the personal in honouring our roots and thinking future. 

My art installation will be on show and includes an invitation to participants to make an offering to be included in a time capsule to be sealed in 2025 and unsealed in 2075 by our successors in the systemic field – to mark the centenary of Systemic family therapy in the UK. I won’t be around in person but in spirit I certainly will be!

If fortunate with timing, I’m hoping it will be possible for the voices of experts by experience to join us in reflective conversation.

About me: I work systemically across the age range and provide services, mostly at my rural home location, enabling connection with both the natural world and crafting.

Title 2: SWIS – A Systemic/Attachment Approach to fostering home-school relationships for autistic children and their families

Presenters: Tara Vassallo, Rudi Dallos & Rebecca Stancer

Many autistic children find school difficult, especially the daily transitions between home and school. The problems can become exacerbated when cycles of mutual blame and criticism develop between home and school.  The child can become unhelpfully triangulated in these situations. The workshop will describe an approach (SWIS) which attempts to foster communication and positive relationships between families and teaching staff where a child has a diagnosis of autism. 

The approach developed uses a systemic solution focused and solution focused approach. It utilises a range of systemic/attachment techniques, such as tracking, externalising and circle of security to enable teachers and parents to work together in a group setting to share experiences of their child and engage in constructive, mutual problem – solving.

Title 3: “Resisting Problematic Substance Use”: How the principles of NVR can be utilised to support families where a young person is mis-using substances. 

Presenter: Luke Cousins

The workshop would include:

• Background on young people’s substance misuse
• Links between substance use and child-to-parent violence (CPV)
• Typical treatment approaches
• Why and how a more systemic approach can be helpful
• How the principles of NVR can be utilised in this context, with case examples.
• An opportunity to practice writing “an announcement” for substance use.

Lunch (13:00) followed by AGM at 14:20

Afternoon Workshops:   14:55 – 16:10

Title 4: Don’t See, Can’t Say, Don’t Know What To Do: Integrating five levels of social engagement to co-construct meaning in the midst of neurodivergent dysregulation

Presenter: Sandy M Burbach; Highly Specialist Speech & Language Therapist

The communication needs of families living with multiple forms of neurodivergence present a particular challenge to both the family and their support systems. When sustained communication between people feels tenuous at the best of times, significant emotional and behavioural dysregulation in one family member may be equally overwhelming for other members of the family, particularly if their reaction does not make sense to anyone else. This workshop introduces a systematic approach to responding to ‘meltdowns,’ based in enactive processes of ‘Languaging’ (Di Paolo and De Jaegher, 2015) and Cippoletta, Mascolo and Procter’s (2020) model of five levels of intersubjective engagement. The approach was developed in conjunction with neurodivergent young people and their families and has been in clinical use since 2014. Participants will have the opportunity to explore how intersubjective meaning is co- constructed at each of the five levels and how they may be integrated by harnessing developmental and functional neural network processes. The aim of the workshop is to provide families and clinicians with a go-to strategy to implement in the prevention and management of sensorimotor and emotional overwhelm. 
There will some small group working. 

Title 5: O Father, where art thou?

Presenters: Bruce Fisher & Beccy Holttum

The absence and underrepresentation of fathers in family therapy (FT) has been a subject of discussion and investigation since the 1970s. 

Our practice experience in Cornwall suggests that this remains a prevalent issue and an ongoing area of interest that deserves continued thought and consideration. 

Aim: 

• Sharing of MSc research project findings of therapist’s experiences of engaging fathers in FT.
• Broadening of the conversation and dialogue around the topic with workshop participants. 

Content:

1. Brief background and overview of MSc research project enquiring about Family Therapist’s experiences of engaging fathers in Family therapy, including key findings and potential implications for practice and supervision. 
2. Group activity & dialogue with participants to further consider their practice along with barriers and enablers regarding fathers and Family Therapy (FT).

Title 6: What’s the symbol for God on the Genogram?: Working with Spiritual and Religious themes within Systemic Practice

Presenter: Steve Davies    

This workshop is an opportunity to explore how themes connected to Spirituality arise in Therapy and especially how Systemic concepts can provide valuable means for exploring ideas such religion, mystery and uncertainty. What do these themes mean for us as practitioners and the lives of those we are supporting therapeutically? 

The workshop will seek to consider some of the ways in which Spirituality has been explored in the history of Psychotherapy and how Systemic concepts regarding co-creation, hypothesis and dominant discourses might be helpful.

Afternoon Tea & Networking: 16:10 – 17:00

We are looking forward to seeing you at the Annual Christmas CPD Event!

Kind regards, 
SWFTF, Christmas Conference Organising Committee