ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how family assessment and family intervention can be successfully utilized to treat problems with children and adolescents. It describes a highly successful skill-building program which can improve parent-child relationships. One of the most highly successful and effective skill building programs is called, Relationship Enhancement (RE) and it is described by their developers, Bernard Guerney and Louise Guerney. The chapter presents a family model which can be used for assessing family dynamics and for planning intervention. It also discusses the value of home visits for motivating and involving family members and summarizes a study is which supports their use. The chapter also describes challenges and procedures of integrating family therapy into a traditional residential treatment center for children. Family based services can not only help facilitate dealing with current child and adolescent problems, but training parents can also serve a critical preventive function.
