Systemic Practice
SYSTEMIC PRACTICE
Systemic practice seeks to make sense of the world through relationships, focusing on the whole system rather than individuals. Systemic practice supports relationship building, communication, reflection and analysis of the systems families live within, looking for meaning within interactions and seeing how things are connected. Systemic practice enables the expression of different viewpoints and generates multiple hypotheses about what might be happening in a family. It also helps to introduce change into a system, creating new explanations and potential solutions for the problems facing families.
Key characteristics of systemic practice can be summarised as: 
- Relational: seeing things in terms of relationships and interpersonal
- Context: making sense of families by understanding the multiple contexts which influence them
- Patterns: focus on interactions between people and how meaning is created from these
- Circularity: move away from locating problems in individuals and see how things are connected.
- Mutual influence: recognising everyone operates through relationships of mutual influence.
Within a systemic culture children, young people and families should expect to work in partnership with professionals while feeling that any differences and diversity is celebrated. A branch of our systemic approach is understanding Social Ggrraaacceeesss, using genograms, family networks and timelines we want children, young people and families to be confident that the services and support they receive are built around their own needs, and that everybody is supported to better understand the problems that they face and are empowered to take control of them. This way of working and thinking allows practitioners to take a much wider and holistic view of the systems and influences around the child which include the family and wider community instead of seeing an individual as the problem.
