ABSTRACT

So far we have talked about bringing family members into the consultation as virtual members: drawing them in through genograms and circles, looping them in through questions, speculating with the individual about ‘what if your father was here?’ ‘What would your daughter say?’. Then in the previous chapter we introduced some skills for working with couples in primary care, but there are also times when it is worth the effort and time required to bring more than two people into the room at once. In this chapter we want to work with the family ‘in the flesh’. Although this chapter is primarily about families, the skills learnt here also lend themselves to other multi-person meetings – network meetings, case conferences and care programme approach (CPA) meetings.