Using narrative therapy in an educational parenting group

Abstract

Narrative therapy techniques have been used extensively in family therapy, individual therapy, and social work. Surprisingly, these techniques have seen limited application to therapeutic and support groups and almost no application to education groups. This paper reports on the use of narrative therapy with an education group, specifically a parent-education group. The central question addressed was: How do results compare with those of traditional parent-education groups? Case examples were reviewed to see if using narrative therapy was beneficial to parents. Written feedback was used to compare groups which did not use narrative therapy to groups which used narrative therapy. The review indicated that the narrative groups reported learning more specific ‘helpful’ skills (especially the skill of ‘listening’) compared to the non-narrative groups.