Herman de Mönnink


‘You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from landing on your shoulder, but you can prevent them nesting in your hair.’ - (Chinese proverb)'

herman de mönnink Drs. Herman de Mönnink (1951) is a social work educator for over 35 years at Hanze University Groningen and works as a trauma psychologist & grief therapist in private practice. He has solid and substantial expertise as a trainer in the field of multi-method social work. His mission is to empower social work identity & image by defining and communicate the specific expertise of social workers. His practice specialisation-areas are grief counselling, psycho-traumatology and burnout. 

He published many articles in the area of social work about social work methods, the study of loss, and burnout-prevention. In 1996, his first book was published, titled ‘Grief Support’ (supporting clients with lifecycle-losses; in Dutch). Recently in 2017, Herman published his newest book titled, ‘The social workers’ toolbox: Sustainable  Multi-method Social Work’. that was published in 2017 with Routledge.

In this book, he defines the specific expertise of social workers in an umbrella-practice model for empowering social work as a scientific based profession. This model articulates the profession of social work as a human needs & human rights profession and includes the 'bio'-factor in the biopsychosocial scope of SW; the model includes 20 SW-tools to work with clients not from one method, but a multi-method approach (a combination of well-described methods).

Herman has lectured in several countries across the world: USA, Canada, Norway, France, Colombia, Belgium, Boston, Portugal, UK, Ireland. Since 1990, he has been a member of the IWG, the International Workgroup of Death Dying and Bereavement.  He is officially a registered member under Dutch law as a health psychologist *).

Recent clients have been people affected by murder, car / train / industrial accidents, sexual abuse, divorce and tsunami. Herman trains police workers, fire fighters, ambulance workers and workers in industrial organisations. From 1980 onwards, he has organized postgraduate courses in Grief support, and from 2001, he has been successfully training social workers in the new multi-method practice model. Finally, he collaborates with the Dutch association of social workers BPSW.

Herman is the author of ‘Grief support'  (ISBN-no. 978-90352- 2993-8, Dutch). He developed the human needs and rights focussed multi-method social work-model: 'The social workers' toolbox’ (ISBN: 90-352-2694-1) which is published with Routledge in 2017.

*) Dutch Individual Healthcare Professions Register (BIG), registration number: 190.55.834.025

 

© H.J. de Mönnink, 2015