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That's okay, ladies and gentlemen, good morning please come on in, I hope you've had yourself help yourself to some delicious lunch for those of you who may not have met me. My name is Margaret

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um er and I'm the academic dean here at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and it is my joy to introduce our 2022 higher lecturer, Dr Cynthia franklin, who serves as the Sternberg Spencer Family professor in mental health

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at the University of texas Austin in the Cve Hicks School of Social Work, with whom we hold a joint degree, Dr franklin was one of the people responsible for that joint degree going through university of texas

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and for us becoming in a long term partnership with our next door neighbors. And yes you can applaud her for that. Dr franklin is the author of over 200 publications. She has been inducted into the

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American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and has been awarded the Gary Lee Schaefer award for academic contributions to the field of social work. The National Association of Social Workers has designated her Social work Pioneer and

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granted her the lifetime achievement awards. She is here to give the higher lecture, which was established in 1996 in honor of former Professor George Higher and its intention is to bring faculty of the University of texas

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over here, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and to foster collaboration and community in this part of Austin. So I invite you to welcome with me. Dr Cynthia franklin as she lectures on the topic, creating preferred

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preferred futures with solution focused brief therapy. Thank you . Hello everyone. Can you hear me okay? It's really a great pleasure to be here with you today and to share in this higher lecture. And

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you know, I have a lot of connections with the seminary, you know, going back to the days when we established the dual program, which I'm really excited about, already met, some students here

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today that are applying are going to be in our dual program in the future. And so it's really great to be back. I've done some workshops over here before and been involved and it's just, it's

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just really fantastic in every way. You know, the steve Hicks School of Social Work and social workers in general. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I'm also a licensed marriage and family therapist, which

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means I was trained to do mental health therapy really . But one thing about social workers, a profession is that social work, like the ministry or like the pastoral care, it really has a mission to

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it. And you know, our mission at the steve Hicks School of Social work has these words in it and that is to promote social justice and also to solve critical social problems. And so the first

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thing I want to tell you about is my mission a little bit, but first I should say, you know, other than what they said about me , which just means I'm very old and that's what

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that means is I'm I'm a wife and a mother and my daughter, I'm very proud to say she graduated from our Master's program in social work in 2021 she has a great job in social work now,

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working with hospice and palliative care company here in Austin Aspen Healthcare and they just, she's kind of in the macro administrative side of it. And she was just involved in hiring one of your grads here as

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a chaplain in that great news and stuff. And so you know, she's doing well and so good job, mom. Right, good job. Uh and so um on that. But I also have

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have a mission in social work. My personal mission , all social workers have a mission. And my mission in social work really was to increase the well being of youth and families. And that is a

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general mission. But more specifically, I really worked very hard to be able to help youth graduate from high school and to transition to a life of safety and security and sustainability. And so my work really

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intersected with school systems a lot and developing interventions that could help these youth graduate from high school. So I want to tell you a little bit about how I got that mission because it's very important because you

00:05:04.060 - 00:05:13.580

have a mission And our mission is always personal and professional, right? You know, both ways. And so I'm gonna tell you about the personal side of it because you know, I'm a social worker

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, the personal side of it is my dad was raised in Oklahoma on a cotton farm, his family lost everything they had in the 1930s recession that went on the great Depression and as a result of that

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and working on that farm, he never learned to read or write, not at all. And can you imagine that, you know, there are people that are totally illiterate in the world today and he

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was one of them, he could only sign his name and so he had a sermon that he liked to preach and that sermon was get your education, get your education and I heard that a million times

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as a young person, you know the way to success is your education and so I really learned to believe that a lot about youth, the best way I can ever help a young person is to help

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them get their education and so that's what I was all about in my in my mission. But you know, one of my friends asked me recently, well how did you get to where you are dr

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franklin, you know, how did you get there ? And I said to her, I said well it really had a lot to do with my education , but it also had to do with something deeper

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in my childhood and that was my faith and spirituality and the church of the living God and I think that's something you can appreciate in this room today. So I say that those are very important parts of

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my life and so what I dedicated myself to is really to help young people. And so I developed an intervention which I want to cover with you today in our brief time we have together and that intervention

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is a solution focused brief therapy. I wasn't the only one that was developed in an interdisciplinary team, but I spent most of my career doing research on it in schools and bringing it to youth and youth

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and families. And so what I want to be able to talk to you today about really is, you know, what is solution focused brief therapy? Maybe you've heard of this or not, you know

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, what is it? And I want you to see what solution building is and how we use that really to develop a preferred future with with young people . And I'll give you some examples of how it's

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used, how it differs from other counseling approaches and also how I've used it in a school here in austin texas called Garza High School, which I've worked with for 20 years. I founded that helped found

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that program, the solution building program that's over there in that high school. Uh and I'll show you a video, that high school today too. So you can see how we brought the principles of this

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therapy really into that high school um to help people . So, but you know, I'd like to start with something funny. Well I'm gonna tell you a funny story, you know, since we're at

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a seminary uh there was a seminary professor and he fell in love with a young woman whose father had a ranch in west texas, are you with me ? And so you know, so so he had

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to go out to the ranch to meet the family because he wanted to marry this woman. And so when he went out there, he said well son we're going to go you know camping, you know

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camping and stuff. So they went on a camping trip and during the camping trip in the middle of the night uh the farmer rancher woke up, he looked at the sky, you know, and he

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said he said son, what do you see? And he said I see the stars, the moon , the heavens, and God's creation and all of its glory. And the sun said to the uh

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seminary professor, said to the rancher, what do you see? And he said, I see someone took our tent. So let's start with this little exercise, I'm gonna give you two minutes, okay

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get a partner and only one of you is gonna be able to talk in that time. But answer these questions right here, tell each other a dream you have for your future, what tells you this

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is important to you? How is the dream supported by your family, friends or teachers and what did they say? And how often did they let you know go? Mhm. Thank you. My parents

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. Okay. Stop. Everybody can stop. I'm sorry. We had more time. This is an exercise though. That's good to do with people. And you know, what was it like for you

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? Anybody want to say to have this exercise to have this conversation, anybody? What was this like ? So you don't want to stop having the conversation because it's a fun conversation. Yeah. What was

00:11:16.160 - 00:11:37.080

it like to have this conversation call it out, Okay, meaningful and brought out the here and now in the future. Right, so we're talking about preferred futures today and this is what we do with

00:11:37.080 - 00:11:50.320

the solution. Focused brief therapy now solution focused brief therapy differs from other therapies because a lot of psycho therapies and interventions that we do in social work and counseling and mental health. They really focus on the

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past. They focus a lot on the origins of people's lives, what's going wrong in their lives and how how to fix those things from the past or what they need to do to stop certain patterns that

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they're having now and thinking feeling and behavior solution focused brief therapy works differently than that. It was created as a change approach. Working with youth and families and with a lot of people with a lot of

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high risk characteristics such as people in the child protective services. People that are homeless people that had a lot of multiple problems in their family, a lot of people that perhaps experience inequities in society. And

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it has a different approach. The approach is instead of focusing on what's wrong with people. We focus on their strengths. And so we focus on the future as a way of helping people change the future

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instead of the past. The past is used as a resource and we focus also on the important people in people's lives of social relationships. This would be like very important people. This could be like your

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family, you know, this could be like your church leaders, This could be like your brother, your sister doesn't matter really who it is. It's the important your peers, important people in your life

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and we use those resources. It's a resource based therapy to help people to help people change. So , um as a part of this work, we focus on goals, you know, instead of problems

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, preferred futures, and so the way we do this is we help people develop a clear picture of the preferred future that they want. And that's part of the change process that's in in solution. Focused

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brief therapy as well. So just to be a little bit concrete with this. So you can understand the meaning, here's some questions, what has to happen today for it to be worth your time to

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come and talk. If you go to a usual therapists are going to ask you, you know, what brought you here? What's wrong? Tell me about your problems. But we ask a question like

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that instead, another question that we might ask is supposed after we talk today that your life would be different, how would you know about that and how how could others tell that things are changing in your

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life? And so these are the kinds of questions that we would ask that would focus on the preferred future and focus on the goal with people. So another difference is we don't focus on problem solving,

00:14:26.050 - 00:14:39.210

we focus on solution building. Now, one of the things that happened in my husband's adolescence is that he blew his car up because he didn't change the oil in it. Now, none of you have

00:14:39.210 - 00:14:50.840

done anything stupid in your adolescence, right? None of you at all. But he did and it blew up as a result of that. So if we were going to teach someone how to solve that

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problem, someone not taking care of their car and we were doing problem solving, we would probably say something, you would say something like, well, you know, you need to change your tires,

00:15:00.520 - 00:15:07.390

you need to change your oil. You have to make sure you have gas in your car. You know, you have to have the check ups for your car and so forth like that, that would

00:15:07.390 - 00:15:20.540

be giving them some things they need to do to solve the problem of the car blowing up oil. But the solution building is really different than that. Instead of that kind of thinking, we would say

00:15:20.540 - 00:15:33.790

to them something like, you know, let's just suppose that your car was in perfect condition, what would have to happen for that to happen? And then they would start to think about that. Well

00:15:33.790 - 00:15:41.730

, I guess I'd have to change the oil and I would say, and I would say, or we would say, okay, if you had to change, how would you do that? How would

00:15:41.730 - 00:15:50.390

that happen? You know, what has to happen ? Have you ever changed the oil before? Have you ever changed the oil in your car before? And they might say yes, I haven't, oh

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you've done that before. Well then we get them to tell us about that and how that was successful , that oil change. Or if they said no , then we would say, well, what would

00:15:58.330 - 00:16:03.810

you think would have to happen to change the oil ? And I said, well, I don't know , I don't know. That's a typical answer at first, but then we just pursue it. What

00:16:03.810 - 00:16:12.410

do you think would have to happen? Well, maybe I'd have to take it to a garage or maybe I'd have to open up the hood and I'd have to look at the oil stick and I'd have

00:16:12.410 - 00:16:23.060

to take the oil stick. So you see, we're walking them through the steps of a preferred future , how you do it, how your life can be different and this is what we do with this

00:16:23.060 - 00:16:33.350

type of therapy. It's a different kind of thinking a different kind of logic. And one of the things I've done is the researchers study the change process of it. How do how do we get people

00:16:33.350 - 00:16:45.210

to change? Using this kind of thinking using this solution building and using this way of building and preferred future. And this is a journal article that was in family process, the name of the article.

00:16:45.210 - 00:16:59.230

So solution focused brief therapy. A systematic review and meta summary of process research which has to do with studies that show how how people change, you know using this intervention as a result of it, we

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found some interesting things. We found that they focus a lot on the co construction of meaning. You mentioned meaning the importance of meaning and what you set out here when we did the little exercise the co

00:17:10.170 - 00:17:22.750

construction of meaning and that's done with the language. And so we use language to reach structure, cognition and behavior and that's what we do. We use strength space of people. Uh we use future focused

00:17:22.750 - 00:17:38.440

techniques, positive emotions, we raise their hope, we give them hope and raise their positive emotions. And we also have cooperative empowering relationships with people as a result of this. So this is the importance

00:17:38.440 - 00:17:49.180

of language and how we see it words have different meanings, you know this in a lot in the work that you do in the seminary have different meanings and so we have to know what those meanings mean

00:17:49.180 - 00:18:00.820

. We have to ground those meanings with our people were talking to to be able to have influence over them. So what we teach people is to watch your language, how many you heard your mother say

00:18:00.820 - 00:18:12.510

that? Watch your language, Watch the way you ask questions. The language that you use, the words that you use because the words that you use are constructive, they actually create the responses in which

00:18:12.510 - 00:18:27.470

you're asking. And so we use this kind of logic, this kind of thinking that's grounded in research and really it's grounded in linguistics really is grounded in science, you know the science of how people talk

00:18:27.480 - 00:18:41.980

and understand one another and we use this as a way to get people to change and this is how the solution focused brief therapy works. So let me show you the most popular question that was invented.

00:18:41.990 - 00:18:53.330

This is a question that was invented inside the solution focused brief therapy. The miracle question. Now this was a question that was really invented to be able to help people to figure out what their future was

00:18:53.330 - 00:19:03.330

what what goal they wanted. And so it was asked like this can be asked in many different ways but it's ask it this way in its original form and that is you know, so if we find

00:19:03.330 - 00:19:14.550

out what people want and what the problem is, they're trying to solve. We use their words and we say, okay, so today you go home and you want to get along with your husband better

00:19:14.560 - 00:19:22.720

. You want all this conflict and all these problems to stop in your family, you know? So so let's you know, so you're going home, right? So let's just say you're going home,

00:19:22.720 - 00:19:30.130

what do you do now? We put them in the experience of it, you're gonna watch some tv , you're going to get some dinner and then you're finally gonna go to bed and then when you go

00:19:30.130 - 00:19:45.880

to bed, you know, then while you're sleeping a miracle happens, but you don't know what that you know that miracles going on. So the next morning when you wake up, what is the first

00:19:45.880 - 00:20:00.570

thing that you will notice that will be different different in your life and you know that is the struggle for people to envision that and that is how the work works because then they start to envision what this

00:20:00.570 - 00:20:12.860

would be like and that's the preferred future. So that's how we use the miracle question in that. And here's some examples of follow up questions. So how would you know that your study habits are getting

00:20:12.860 - 00:20:23.520

better? You know, not what's wrong with your study habits, but how would you know that they were getting better. I'm curious what would tell you that you had a better self esteem, what would

00:20:23.520 - 00:20:34.020

you see yourself doing? And so we ask questions like that. The miracle that they are the miracle to we have them like talk that out in lots of detail. And so this is how we get

00:20:34.020 - 00:20:51.920

change to happen. This is how we help people change and develop a preferred future. Using the solution focus right there. So I took this intervention And in 2001 I was contacted by Garza High School that

00:20:51.920 - 00:21:03.180

was founded in 1998 as an alternative school to help young people. How many of you heard of Garza Garza High School? Right. And so I took it and I took a foundation grant and I went

00:21:03.180 - 00:21:12.890

over there and I helped them put this intervention, this is a way of talking solution talk, it's a way of talking to people to get them to change. And we put it inside the school and

00:21:12.890 - 00:21:25.380

in a trans disciplinary team and inside this team that was everybody was trained, not just it's an intervention that it's not just for social workers and counselors, it can be for teachers. A lot of my

00:21:25.380 - 00:21:36.140

work's been with teachers, it can be for, you know pastors, you know, it can be for anyone to use. And so we put it inside the school And from that, the school has

00:21:36.140 - 00:21:47.000

become a model program, a solution focused high school . I've been working with it for over 20 years , it's all in the school culture, even we trained, even the even the custodial staff, everyone

00:21:47.000 - 00:21:56.180

was trained in this way of being. It's a way of being with with the students that come in the guards of high school who have a lot of difficulties, a lot of them have mental health challenges

00:21:56.190 - 00:22:10.870

, substance use issues, social these critical social problems that we try to solve in social work, they have this and we put this model over the school and then we have everyone do it in a team

00:22:10.880 - 00:22:21.580

approach inside the school. Oh by the way this picture up here, I told you it's become a model school. This was actually done by japanese artist and that's me and Enzo kinberg and steve who was

00:22:21.590 - 00:22:34.370

the original inventors of the model in Hamburg was my mentor and supervisor and so the Japanese artist sent this to me because this school has become known in different countries and in the United States and you know all

00:22:34.370 - 00:22:45.110

over the all over the world as a model school program for solution focused brief therapy and also recognized by the texas education agency as a model school program and voted by the U. S. Department of Education

00:22:45.110 - 00:22:56.470

is one of the top 41 dropout prevention programs in the world. And this is just a little school in East Austin by the way just just a little school. So I'm gonna show you a video of

00:22:56.470 - 00:23:07.850

this and you think about what I've said about the preferred future and some of the ways that we get people to change and using the language and the strength of people and notice in this video how we put

00:23:07.850 - 00:23:18.070

these principles and put this inside this high school, inside this program, inside this high school and maybe you could think about even then how could you do is they put this inside your your your school or

00:23:18.070 - 00:23:32.330

in your church, you know, in other ways and and make it useful. And one thing I really like about this video is um it was done by the students. The Garza students actually did this

00:23:32.330 - 00:24:19.370

video. And so the faculty cannot, if I can get this cursor to work right, cannot take responsibility for it. Monday Chest Q. 03. Whether we are um school before Garza, I had

00:24:19.380 - 00:24:48.210

been regardless about shaping. What do you think is about home you walk into? You see all these paintings and you see all these weird like who made that? It was a unique person that made that

00:24:48.220 - 00:25:17.960

like on the outside. Mhm. I think the Garza isn't really about students. You are to whatever needs to be done. We're here as we all go through life. We find certain times in life

00:25:17.970 - 00:25:41.880

where things are not working as well or I need to change something. And what's wonderful is we celebrate those changes. Come here like I don't care happy and you know, community that's has been brought together

00:25:41.880 - 00:25:56.410

to help people just get where they need to be in life and to help them get where they are and just learn kind of a way of life. All about being yourself I think is about giving people

00:25:56.410 - 00:26:26.250

a second chance. I think how second chances my old school out, if I didn't like all of the teachers at my other schools, the majority of the time completely I didn't have stable housing, I

00:26:26.260 - 00:26:40.120

needed to get stable more than I needed to come to. You know, I'll be in school and that be thinking about what I'm doing at school. This is just temporary things only for knowledge where I'm

00:26:40.130 - 00:26:56.170

gonna go after school. You know, I came the beginning of 2014 which was almost a year after molasses. I had no idea that I was gonna , you know, get all the benefits that I've

00:26:56.180 - 00:27:18.240

got. And coming here, you can really graduate and it gives you life. And maybe at your old school the kids here, they're smart and they're different. Always happy. You don't want to start

00:27:18.240 - 00:27:42.500

, you can help, I'm coming to class and I'll be like and then just be like you like five teachers are excited laid back and you get your class uh teacher to student ratio, it's smaller so

00:27:42.510 - 00:27:53.830

you can have more individualized approach when I need it . I have more isolated approach. When I want the star walk is when a student completes all the credits you get to walk around the whole school and

00:27:53.830 - 00:28:07.270

everybody comes out and choose the congratulations on graduating. So it's kind of like your own individual graduation. It makes you feel special. That makes you feel accomplished. And it definitely motivates others to graduate graduation

00:28:08.860 - 00:28:40.210

ingrained and fantasies walk down the hall and show everyone getting to be a registered nurse Changed to go to college for the next nine years of my life. You relate to that Ashley say that being Garza,

00:28:40.220 - 00:28:53.690

I had more support and even it is such a small save. But the support here is like incredible . No, everyone, I made friends like my first day, like people were so nice here as

00:28:53.690 - 00:29:26.240

soon as there's a famous quote, education is leading a fire not filling by it and I think that's what this school is about. Both. Yeah, it's about learning how to help yourself. Okay,

00:29:26.250 - 00:29:41.250

that's Garza High school now. We put these principles of the solution focused brief therapy inside the school and its works in schools have done a lot of research on schools to and it really, really helps these

00:29:41.250 - 00:29:53.170

young people and of course it is a community like they talked about here and it's it's a great, great place to work. In fact, I was over there doing the in service training this year because

00:29:53.170 - 00:30:03.110

they have a new principal and I would show you the story walk. I don't know if we have time for that, but I did want to show you some resources. I want to leave some time

00:30:03.110 - 00:30:14.910

for you to have some questions and answer civilly. You raise your hand that you heard of the Garza High School already. These are some of the things that we put together to support the school, you

00:30:14.910 - 00:30:27.750

know that even in other people to put things other schools together, I guess would be the way to say that. And this is a book solution focused brief therapy and alternative schools. And it was a

00:30:27.760 - 00:30:41.750

book that really was about Garza High School. Actually , the stories in it are actually teachers that actually wrote out how they use it in the classroom with students use solution building and classroom with students. And

00:30:41.760 - 00:30:51.860

we also have the counseling examples in it and so forth. And the programmatic examples of it. So I guess one thing you can say about me, so I'm an intervention researcher. So I develop interventions

00:30:51.860 - 00:31:03.300

, I developed programs and develop them down on the ground. It's like building a church, you would say that it's like church planting. That's what I do. That's my gifting and that's what I do

00:31:03.740 - 00:31:12.760

. And so, you know, I've done that . And so this manual here helps other people to envision this type of school too. And you know , put it together and then this other one solution

00:31:12.760 - 00:31:25.250

focused brief therapy in schools was actually a book, this Oxford University press book, It was it was developed to support the school social work Association of America , which is a school social workers was good for

00:31:25.250 - 00:31:36.300

any kind of counselor or mental health professional that that , you know, is interested in learning solution focused brief therapy and putting it in school. So those are a couple of examples, but it's also been

00:31:36.300 - 00:31:45.850

used in pastoral care. So I want to show you this in particular because you're going to like this part of it I think, and that is this book is my book actually that I wrote with Rowena

00:31:45.850 - 00:31:59.670

Fong the Church Leaders counseling resource book and it was written to support people and that deliver pastoral care in churches and you know, that's not just pastors in large churches, you know, that's a lot of

00:31:59.670 - 00:32:15.800

laypeople as well. And so we wanted to bring them into the community of service community services and help them be leaders really, you know, in in delivering pastoral care to their um you know, to

00:32:15.800 - 00:32:25.630

their congregations. And so we wrote this book for that reason and it has a lot of counseling interventions in it, but also has a solution focused brief therapy counseling and shows you how to how to do

00:32:25.630 - 00:32:37.120

that. And so we give them a lot of different types of skills in that, but I'm not the only one. Have you seen this book by Charles L in color? This is actually came up

00:32:37.120 - 00:32:49.170

with Sandra Van and I think, you know, that's a big evangelical kind of press, but you know, it's a it's solution focused pastoral counseling and it's a fairly new book, but there's been several

00:32:49.170 - 00:33:01.480

others. So if you get on amazon you'll see that solution focused brief therapy has been used in uh in pastoral care and counseling and as well as schools in another setting. So it's a great intervention for

00:33:01.480 - 00:33:15.550

organizations and for you to use in your pastoral care , your pastoral counseling uh and your work in the community and your work with social workers, because they often use it because kinberg and steve head up there

00:33:15.550 - 00:33:25.450

, they were social workers, they were in the studies and they developed this this intervention. So it actually came out of the social work profession um and came out of a clinic in Milwaukee where they were

00:33:25.450 - 00:33:38.050

doing work with with with people, so it has this kind of pragmatic influences. So this is also a way that you can can use it. So , but let me you know close with this because

00:33:38.050 - 00:33:51.340

, you know, the Guards of high school is really about helping people right graduate from high school, these young people and then, you know, advancing them into the future, like I said, you

00:33:51.340 - 00:34:04.160

know, safety Security, and sustainability. And when I think about sustainability, I think about financial sustainability , it really is like that. But I think you you and your work and you don't just have

00:34:04.160 - 00:34:16.480

to be a dual degree student at the school of social work to do this, you can do this as pastors and ministers because how I got into social work was really, you know, because I studied

00:34:16.590 - 00:34:34.060

in a bible college to go into the ministry. Okay, this is how I got into social work . And my academic advisor told him today, I had a new testament survey academic advisor though, was

00:34:34.060 - 00:34:46.440

a missionary to china and actually she graduated Yale, she was a really brilliant woman. But your academic advisors here, some of you and your students, you may hear these conversations and she asked me when

00:34:46.440 - 00:34:58.180

I was 19 years old, she said, What has God called you to do with your life? Have you heard that question before, Discern the will of God or you know what God has called you

00:34:58.190 - 00:35:07.980

life and I said, well this is what I see, I see there's all these people in the world and they're hurting, you know, they have substance use in their families, they have family problems

00:35:07.980 - 00:35:20.760

, they have child abuse, they have all these things in their family. And you know, I think God wants us as churches and people to help those people, I think he does. And she

00:35:20.760 - 00:35:31.400

leaned across the desk and said to me, Cynthia , God has called you to be a social worker , that's what social workers do, that's what they did. I didn't know what social work was.

00:35:31.400 - 00:35:44.220

I'd never come in contact with one in my childhood , her family, but she taught me about social work and she laid her hands on me and prayed for me and said God raised this young woman up

00:35:44.230 - 00:35:55.850

and help her be a great leader in social work . And I always tell everyone this story but when I say it I always also say I don't I have become a leader in social work. I don't

00:35:55.850 - 00:36:09.200

know if I become a great leader yet. So that's how I got. So that's you two. You definitely can be very imp actual in people's lives and your role in the church and the ministry and

00:36:09.200 - 00:36:22.440

you can work in partnership with social workers. So that's my message to you today. And thank you very much for letting me come and share my work and my life work and the U. T.

00:36:22.450 - 00:36:30.540

Work. And it is part of ut austin my work in this higher lecture and I'm happy to take some questions if we have time for them to you