Beyond the family; using network meetings with statutory child care cases

Abstract

This article describes and discusses the use of network meetings in child care cases. It draws on the literature of network therapy and family therapy and adapts it to a new setting. It describes two cases in detail and raises questions about the limitations of family therapy to the development of systemic thinking. It also includes a practical guide to the use of network meetings.

Providing Specialist Psychological Support to Foster Carers: A Consultation Model

“…Involving the whole care-giving network allows improved understanding and fosters working together (Downes, 1992). It also provides the members of the network with time for reflection (Nissim, 1993), which in itself can create change (Dimmock & Dungworth, 1985).…”

How can family therapy and systemic practice make a difference in front line social care?

“…They described many of their interventions as being with the wider system and to ‘the very agency in which we work’ (p. 56) (rather than with families), and saw a need for the development of a literature about interventions in such wider systems. They contributed in a later paper () to the beginnings of such a literature, suggesting the use of network meetings to ‘place network members in a new situation which required innovation on their part’ (p. 65), adding that they saw a narrow concern with family therapy as being by contrast an obstacle in such ‘non‐clinical settings’. The work of Reder (), and more recently Seikkula et al () and Fredman (), has developed such a literature further and this is drawn on in our current edition in the paper by Martin Clements and Richard Mc Kenny, where they describe a pilot study in which initial meetings following referral were followed routinely with a network meeting following a systemic format, and by Mark Huhnen’s paper describing the use of an anticipatory dialogue approach in a social care setting.…”

Family therapy and the public sector in the UK: comment on Lappin and VanDeusen

“…British family therapists have devoted a considerable amount of attention to these matters (e.g. Skynner, 1967;Dimmock and Dungworth, 1985;Reder, 1986;Hardwick, 1991). Of particular importance is the relationship between the family as 'client' and the therapist as a practitioner exercising a legally prescribed role: who is the 'customer' for change ?…”