Building family practice skills : methods, strategies, and tools / D. Mark Ragg.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 467-495) and index.

Thinking family : theories and frameworks -- Four parenting functions -- Cultural influences on family functions -- Exploration and data collection with families -- Structuring the family exploration -- Moving from assessment to treatment -- Preliminary engagement with family members -- Interactive engagement with family members -- Positioning families for change -- Direct change strategies for influencing family action systems -- Direct change strategies for influencing family processing systems -- Influencing family members through indirect strategies of change -- Challenges and promise -- Multiagency work -- Support-focused intervention.

This book presents a transtheoretical 'response system framework' for understanding family practice. This framework organizes theoretical information, assessment protocols, skills, and intervention strategies into a learning structure that helps students understand myriad client situations and the intervention strategies that would be most appropriate for those specific situations. Using this over-arching structure, and focusing on two systems of response--action systems (how family members behave and interrelate) and processing systems (how family members interpret/feel) - [the author] guides readers through the five parts of the book with the goal of building holistic family intervention skills.