Reaching Out in Family Therapy: Home-Based, School and Community Interventions - Hardcover

"This is a powerful, thorough, and extremely relevant book. It will prove to be an essential graduate-level text for instructors who are serious about training students to work with underserved populations. Boyd-Franklin and Bry have also done a tremendous service for working professionals in providing practical, meaningful guidelines for establishing and deepening linkages to client families' communities. Exceptional coverage includes working with families in crisis and intervention and prevention in schools." --James L. Karustis, PhD, Psychologist, Haverford Medical Center, Havertown, Pennsylvania

"Reaching Out in Family Therapy is specific and practical in its discussion of home-based and community interventions, capturing the relationship between clinical work and culture, race, and ethnicity. The book teaches theory and technique at the same time that it serves as a practical manual. This is a rich resource for today's clinician who would venture into the real world of clients, particularly ethnic and racial minorities." --Harry J. Aponte, MSW, author of Bread and Spirit

"A sure winner. This book is a hands-on, ready reference that gives family workers explicit instruction on how to successfully engage with parents, children, and adolescents in the home, school, and community. The authors explain how families, overwhelmed by poverty, racism, violence, or other stressors, may become alienated from needed support. Therapists learn to bond with these 'difficult' families and help them navigate the maze of complex systems in which they are embedded. Enhancing the therapist's work and involvement, this book will be invaluable in the education and training of family therapists and social workers. Truly a gift." --Elaine Pinderhughes, MSW, Professor Emeritus, Boston College Graduate School of Social Work

"This volume should be read by everyone working with families. It provides a practical, clear framework for multisystems intervention at the individual, family, community, and agency levels, with special attention to the needs of children and adolescents. Drawing carefully on the literature to back up their ideas, the authors bring many years of experience as clinicians and educators to this book. Without oversimplifying the difficult lives of the families they serve, they present thoughtful, resourceful, and manageable suggestions for practice. This is a hopeful, positive, and essential guide." --Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD (h.c.), Family Institute of New Jersey

Illustrated with extensive clinical case material, this volume provides the skills practitioners need to conduct structural and behavioral family therapy sessions in the home, school, and community. The authors demonstrate how meetings outside of the traditional office setting can enable therapists to intervene actively in the various systems that affect clients' lives. This multisystems approach can be particularly useful when working with poor and ethnic minority families, whose support networks may include extended family, school personnel, and members of the "church family." Practitioners learn how to utilize out-of-office sessions to meet the people who are influential in clients' lives; observe the life realities of children, adolescents, and parents; and identify resources that can be mobilized to produce change. Detailed strategies are presented to help families navigate the overlapping demands of multiple agencies and institutions and to manage and prevent such problems as substance abuse, drop-out, and child abuse.