Frequently Asked Questions

There are many ways to learn more about Response-Based Practice. Check out our Resources tab, containing publications and media, providing over 30 years of literature, conversations, and content where you can explore, expand and learn more about RBP. You can also visit our Learning Centre, where we offer both online, self-paced certificate training, and cohort-based options (online) for training on RBP where you can deep dive into the approach, and learn from Allan, Shelly, and Cathy more closely. We consistently offer live training throughout Canada and Internationally, hosted by partnering organizations. Join our mailing list to receive updates on our upcoming offerings. Have a specific question about RBP? Send us an email and we can discuss further: welcome@responsebasedpractice.com!

We focus on how people respond, what they do, instead of how they are affected. For example, we understand despair as meaningful responses to violence and other forms of adversity. Different approaches are likely to see despair as symptoms, or negative effects, rather than meaningful responses, even forms of resistance. A child may protest mistreatment or emotional disconnection by crying or refusing to cry, by disobeying or feigning compliance. Is the child sad or refusing to be contented? Context is all.

Response-Based Practice is ‘dignity-driven’ and ‘violence-informed’. Our primary focus is on the nature of violence and resistance; close analysis and accurate descriptions of violent actions and victims/survivors’ responses and resistance to those actions, in context. This includes close attention to actual and possible responses that victims/survivors and perpetrators receive from social network and institutional actors.  The trauma discourse can be helpful in acknowledging a person or group has been harmed.  However, when violence is referred to as “trauma”, the focus too readily shifts from the actions of perpetrators and the quality of social responses to inferences about the minds, brains, bodies of victims/survivors.  In our view, more effort could be directed to improving the quality of institutional responses.  We would not support a training program for medical doctors that included no courses on cancer.  Similarly, given the vast extent of violence and associated suffering, we argue that all human service professionals should receive extensive training in understanding interpersonal violence – and resistance.

No method is always the right method for every situation/person. This said, Response-Based Practice is used for a wide variety of situations across practice and cultural  settings, for understanding adversity. Please refer to the scope of applications of Response-Based Practice listed under ‘what we do’.

If you are looking for a clinical supervisor trained in RBP, please contact us (Email: welcome@responsebasedpractice.com), including any necessary details regarding the supervision you are seeking (e.g., your field of practice, needed hours, location (if applicable), etc.) and we would be happy to send along the names and contact details of practitioners trained in RBP who are currently offering clinical supervision. You can also email us asking to join our mailing list, where we frequently send out invitations to clinical supervision series offered in an online group setting.

To book a RBP workshop, keynote address, or training event, please send us  an email outlining the following details of the type of offering you are looking for:

• Desired timeline/dates
• Duration
• Type of event (e.g., keynote, workshop, training series)
• The name and context of your organization or community
• Number of anticipated attendees
• Your budget

Over the years, we have certified dozens of therapists in RBP. While we have chosen not to display this information publicly at this time, if you are in search of an RBP therapist, please send us an email outlining the following:

• Location
• Whether virtual therapy is an option
• Any specialty areas you may be looking for in a therapist
• Any other preferences you may have regarding a therapist

Where possible, we will do our best to respond with a recommendation that matches your request.

You can also review the list of therapists practicing through the ‘Centre for Dignity’, a division of the Centre for Response-Based Practice, located in Kamloops, British Columbia: www.rbpinterior.com

We have been working with colleagues across practice settings and in a wide variety of locations for more than 30 years. The response-based framework has been adopted as ‘best practice’ in a number of child protection offices, eating disorder clinics, youth justice programs, and family therapy offices. Some of these include:

• Yukon Women’s Transition Home
• FearIsNotLove (formerly Calgary Women’s Shelter)
• BC Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD)
• Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society (LAWS)
• Danish Eating Disorder Clinic (Copenhagen, Denmark)
• Department of Communities & Justice (DCJ), (New South Wales, Australia: child protection)
• Gender Equality Authority (Sweden)
• Unizon (Sweden)
• Narrative Prospektiver (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Response-Based Practice has been used as the practice modality within a number of projects funded by child protection services (MCFD), police (RCMP), Women & Gender Equality (WAGE), and GOOGLE. Some of these projects include:

• Youth for Dignity (Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society, Watson Lake, Yukon)
• Islands of Safety (MCFD, Vancouver Island, British Columbia)
• The Advocacy Project (Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society, Watson Lake, Yukon)
• The response-based interviewing handbook (FearIsNotLove, Calgary, Alberta)
• The response-based supervision handbook (FearIsNotLove, Calgary, Alberta)

These resources can be found on our ‘resources’ page.

The term “dignity-driven” was coined by Kate Alexander in a conversation with Allan Wade, of the Centre for Response-Based Practice.  Kate was then Practice Lead for Family and Children’s Services (FACS) in New South Wales, the child protection authority.  FACS serves a population of over 8 million people.

Kate had become very interested in Response-Based Practice and was discussing how to apply it in FACS, for front line workers.  Kate later went on to do a Ph.D. with Cathy Humphreys, one of the leading Australian scholars on interpersonal violence, and published three original research articles showing the positive difference Response-Based Practice can make when applied to domestic violence situations, a common concern in child protection. (references)

Allan suggested that if Kate and her team were to work at applying Response-Based Practice in FACS, they do so under a different name.  “Response-Based Practice” has become something of a “brand”, though Allan and colleagues have made no effort to copyright or “own” the term.  Our view is that “ownership” of such terms and related ideas, particularly as they relate directly to social justice and human rights concerns, is antithetical to the larger goal of promoting further development of the work through local adaptations across cultural and social contexts.

Kate thought for a moment and then asked, “What about ‘dignity-driven’ practice?”.  Allan immediately agreed, in part because it is more descriptive than the term “Response-Based”, in part because it uses the already known and widely used term “dignity”, a term we have always used in “Response-Based Practice”.  Consistent with the spirit of “Response-Based Practice”, the term “dignity-driven” locates practice in ordinary language rather than professional jargon.

Kate’s essay, “Sorry”, beautifully illustrates the meaning of “dignity” and “dignity-driven” practice.  In her role with FACS, as part of an Australian Royal Commission, Kate was charged with saying “Sorry” to Indigenous women elders who were abducted and sent to Parramatta Girls’ Home, some at age 12, where they endured sexualized and other forms of violence.  Kate wrote:

“Sixteen extraordinarily courageous women gave evidence. It was intended that they would read pre-prepared statements. As the Hearing extended into its second week it was clear that each woman was there to tell her story in her way.”

“They taught me what’s important about the ways they are heard and remembered. They taught me, with unmatched power, to uphold dignity by honouring resistance.”

In “Sorry”, Kate describes the practice of opening the way for the women to speak about their own resistance to the violence.

This is the original context for the term “dignity-driven practice” – a term we hope to preserve in honour of all people whose have worked to uphold their own and others’ dignity in the face of violence.  For the creation of this term, we are indebted through Kate to the women who survived the Parramatta Girls’ Home and who testified at the National Enquiry.

We use the term “dignity” not to refer to status dignity – not the dignity of the Crown, not the faux dignity we perform for wealthy and privileged people as we quietly giggle at their arrogance, and not the dignity we enact ceremoniously to uphold the credibility of public institutions.  We mean “equal dignity” – the dignity enacted every day by people who embody simple decency, who know that “everyone is important and no one is more important than anyone else”.

Allan Wade Ph.D./C.M., Shelly Dean, Ph.D., Cathy Richardson, Ph.D.

Centre for Response-Based Practice (2017)

*In acknowledgment of Kate Alexander (Ph.D.) and the Indigenous women imprisoned as children in Parramatta Girls’ Home.