ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to demonstrate how utilising a Solution Focused approach with vulnerable children is useful in helping them to find their own voice and make their own choices. The acronym VUCA seems increasingly relevant in everyday life. It describes a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment, which, when anticipated and understood, can be coped with and eventually even outsmarted. For many vulnerable children – young carers, witnesses of domestic violence, those suffering neglect and/or abuse, those in care, those whose parents misuse alcohol or are drug-dependent – a VUCA home-life is a daily reality.
In addition, school-life can also often feel like a battleground. Media reporting and entrenched societal stances can be biased and prejudiced against the more vulnerable amongst us. Thankfully, a Solution Focused approach provides an essential alternative to this view: that humankind is innately resourceful; that change can happen through the conversational exploration of hope and possibility; that even the tiniest signs of change can act as a dynamic catalyst in moving lives forwards.
