ABSTRACT
Many family therapists work in private practice, which holds its own unique contextual challenges. The ®rst of these is the relationship between the therapist and the referrer: Most families ®nd a private practitioner through another professional, whether it be a GP (Dimmock 1993) or another psychological therapist. This relationship may affect the types of families that the therapist meets and determines the relationship between therapist and referrer (e.g. does the therapist inform the referrer about progress?). For instance, if a psychiatrist referred a family to the family therapist, it might be assumed that issues of mental health will have been addressed and hence family members are able to take a full part in the therapy. On the other hand, if another therapist has referred the family, questions about risk and safety may need to be assessed before work was undertaken. This is one of the essential differences between private practice and agencybased family therapy ± in the latter there is usually a multidisciplinary team who can help the therapist assess risk collaboratively, whilst in private practice this resource is not available. This leads to private practitioners being perhaps more careful about the families they work with. It also means that the practitioner needs to maintain relationships with referrers so that appropriate and safe referrals are made.
