ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the application of an intervention design project in a large, midwestern agency serving troubled youth and their families. The goal of the project was to design and test the clinical utility of social network interventions as a means of aiding clinical supervisors and program staff in addressing the social support needs of this group. We were interested, as well, in the compatibility of our tool, the Social Network Map (Tracy and Whittaker 1990), with the agency's well-developed practitioner-oriented information system (Grasso and Epstein 1987 and 1989). Throughout this present effort and a predecessor project (Whittaker, Tracy, and Marckworth 1988), we were guided by the vision of research-inservice of practice so ably articulated by Rothman (1980) and Thomas (1984). Their pioneering conceptions of "social R&D" and "intervention design and development" (0&0) provided both a catalyst and a framework for organizing our research and development activities.
