Helping Families in Family Centres: working at therapeutic practice

edited by Linnet MacMahon and Adrian Ward

JESSICA KINGSLEY PUBLISHERS (2001) ISBN 1853028355 £15.95  285PP

McMahon and Ward offer a spirited defence of therapeutic social work as it is practiced in family centres and which can be successfully transferred to other social work settings

As with families, family centres are not all alike. Some operate on a referrals-only basis, offering intensive therapeutic help to a small number of families; others have a strong ethos of community involvement and user control; others again have grown from day-nurseries and maintain a core child-care function. Faced with this diversity, can we talk about a 'family centre approach'? Do we have common theoretical understanding? How does therapeutic work fit within the often public space of the family centre?

The editors of this admirable collection of writings on family centre practice have set out to answer these questions. Their intentions are explicit: to contribute to the theoretical base of family centre work and to examine how the disparate elements of this work form a coherent - and creative - whole.

Adrian Ward's opening chapter describes some of the most significant features of family centre life: the focus on the group (family-group, user-group, staff-group) as the basic unit; the creation of Winnicott's 'holding environment'; the emphasis on partnership and democracy; the public nature of much of the work; and the significance of 'opportunity-led' interventions (which require staff to work 'on the hoof').

Further chapters illustrate these themes. One of the most refreshing aspects of this book is its wealth of practice material illustrating the theoretical perspectives and giving a very real sense of life as it is lived in the family centre. I particularly enjoyed  Yvonne Bailey-Smith's contribution, 'A Systemic Approach to Working with Black Families', with her emphasis on the necessity of 'the ideas of both/and rather than either/or', Anton Green's thoughtful and heartening account of working with 'failure to thrive', and Sarah Musgrave's meticulous case-studies in her chapter on 'holding' as a vehicle for change.

Linnet MacMahon suggests that 'family centres are the friendly acceptable face of social services'. This is often true (and can account for some of the tensions between family centres and local social services offices, whether or not they are both part of the

same organisation). However, Rosemary Lilley, in her stimulating contribution on the management of anxiety, is particularly acute in her comment on under-resourcing: 'Family centres are a proactive means of addressing complex family situations?ut?are] also a means whereby society can dump its  problems'.

The editors make a similar political point in their conclusion where they emphasise the need for properly resourced, long-term therapeutic work of the sort that is so well described in this book as well as  the economically preferable brief intervention.

As a social worker who has worked in a family centre for many years, I welcome the opportunity this book provides to reflect on what is most distinctive about family centre practice. The practice-base of many of the contributors give it a grounding in solid experience and a strong, and often moving, sense of the realities of work in this setting.

McMahon and Ward offer a spirited defence of therapeutic social work as it is practiced in family centres and which, as the last contributor suggests, can be successfully transferred to other social work settings. I would have liked to have read more about the inclusion of fathers and, in some of the chapters, to have been given more of a sense of the agency itself. These minor reservations aside, this book is bursting with ideas and principles which will be of interest to all those who are concerned with helping children and families.

TERRY JONES

Terry Jones is team leader (Family Support) at Barnardo's  New Fulford Family Centre, Bristol