About Us

BRIEF was founded in 1989 and the following year held its inaugural conference at which Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, the co-founders of solution focused brief therapy, presented their ideas for the first time in Britain. The demand for training and therapy has kept BRIEF busy and expanding ever since.

BRIEF is where Solution Focused Brief Therapy started in Britain. Evan George, Chris Iveson and Harvey Ratner were working in an NHS clinic when they heard about the Brief Family Therapy Centre in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee group were just beginning to publish their ideas and BRIEF arose from the successful attempt to develop these ideas within the British context. BRIEF is now Europe's largest provider of solution focused training with over 4000 professionals from the NHS, local authorities, education and private sector undertaking courses each year.

Since the early days of Solution Focused practice BRIEF has become aware of the wider potential of the approach, developing applications in the fields of coaching, leadership, conflict resolution and team building. These developments have taken BRIEF out of the fields of health, education and social care into the corporate sector where managers and leaders are becoming increasingly clear about its transformative potential.