Family Therapy

Structured Therapeutic Family Work

“Engaging with the parents and families of children and young people who have shown harmful sexual behaviours is not a luxury to be tagged onto the end of programmes of individual work with their child. Intervention with families is at least as important as individual work with the child. Approaches to families should not allow the abuse to go unchallenged, but blaming and deficit approaches are not effective. Most families, even where there are multiple problems, have some strengths upon which professionals should build. Helping to raise parents’ self-esteem and their sense of self-efficacy is often the key to positive family change and good outcomes for children.” (Hackett 2004)

At Apple Orchard we pride ourselves on our holistic approach. Whilst we endeavour to ensure that each young person builds on their relationships with their family as an integral part of what we do, there are times when extra support is needed for the young person and his family. Often it is appropriate and necessary to offer as an addition, Therapeutic Family Work to augment the therapy of the young person. Such work is carried out independently to the young person’s therapy and is arranged separately according to the need of each young person. Therapeutic Family Work draws from Systemic Family Therapy approaches and Narrative therapy and consists of between six to ten sessions depending on the strength of relationship between the family members.

“The systemic perspective is to always take account of the full range of systems that can be seen as nesting inside each other. It is this orientation that has led the field to place a high priority on working with all aspects of diversity and to be concerned with issues of power and difference such as the impact of migration, economic hardship, and racism. Systemic practice may be with an individual, a couple, a family, a group of families, professional systems and other wider contexts.” (Stratton 2011)