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This paper describes the involvement of peer trainers in Tree of Life groups for young people living with Type 1 Diabetes. The approach is informed by narrative therapy and collective narrative practice and principles, where people are seen as separate from problems and the focus is on creating opportunities for people to tell and witness one another’s preferred identity stories. Young people who have participated in a Tree of Life day are invited to join the project as peer trainers who help facilitate, engage group participants, witness their stories and consult to the project. Involving peer trainers also aims to create a community where preferred identity stories can be lived and witnessed. This paper describes the training for peer trainers and the building of community.

This article describes the ‘Beads of Life’ approach – a five-part methodology informed by narrative therapy to enable children and young people to make sense of their cancer journey in ways that make them stronger. Young people are invited to use beads as prompts to tell preferred stories of their identity to create a safe place to stand from which to story their cancer journey. The approach positions young people as experts in their lives. It aims to change their relationship with cancer to reduce its negative impact on life by lessening isolation. By enabling medical staff to get to know the young person apart from the cancer, this approach aims to create hope for the future and improve quality of care.

Family therapists from 10 different countries (China, India, Israel including Palestinian citizens, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Turkey, Uganda, and the United Kingdom) describe systemic therapy in their contexts and current innovative work and challenges. They highlight the importance of family therapy continuing to cut across disciplines, the power of systems ideas in widely diverse settings and institutions (such as courts, HIV projects, working with people forced into exile), extensive new mental health initiatives (such as in Turkey and India), as well as the range of family therapy journals available (four alone in Spain). Many family therapy groups are collaborating across organizations (especially in Asia) and the article presents other ideas for connections such as a clearing house to inexpensively translate family therapy articles into other languages.

This paper describes a model of crisis intervention to families of adolescents below the age of 16 who deliberately harm themselves and summarizes the premises which guide our practice. The adolescent's "overdose" is understood as an attempt to resolve relationship conflicts and so the initial interview aims to explore the predicament for the adolescent and the family and decide what further help may be required. Verbatim extracts from one session illustrate this process. Language: en

The influences of social and family characteristics on individual differences in reading and spelling ability and IQ were investigated for 550 twin children aged 13 yrs. Measures of family social circumstances, parental background, the emotional atmosphere at home and the family's reading behaviour were used as predictor variables in multiple regression analyses with reading, spelling and IQ as dependent variables. There were consistent relationships between many of these measures and the dependent variables. The findings are compared to a previous biometrical genetic analysis of the same data set. It is concluded that the results are within the limits predicted by the genetic analysis. Most of the effect of these environmental influences on children are general, i.e. related to IQ, and not specifically related to reading. After controlling for the effects of IQ on reading, only family size and some aspects of parent-child relationships were significant predictors of reading ability

This article weaves research findings and clinical practice to address five ethical dilemmas: How to include children in sessions so that they feel listened to, appreciated and not judged; how to attend to children's feelings without making the focus solely their troubles; how to create a context in which children can express themselves when they cannot find the words; how to ensure a suitable time, place and relationship for talking; and how to create a safe context for respectful co-ordination between the different views of children and adults. A practical example including transcripts from sessions is presented. The authors show how a toy bear joining two therapists in a reflecting team can create opportunities for a 10-year-old girl and her parents to voice their different views and hear the different perspectives of each other. The parents, who generously agreed to share details of their family sessions, offered useful feedback on this write-up, suggesting that this article may be useful for staff and parents who join therapists in a playful approach to reflecting teams with children.

The reading skills of 285 pairs of 13-year-old twins drawn from the general population were studied. The twins were independently tested using standardized measures of intelligence, reading and spelling ability. The genetic contribution to reading ability was assessed by examination of correlations in monozygotk: (MZ) and student-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins, and by analysing differences bi Mccen MZ and DZ twins in concordance of reading disability rates. The results suggested that, at this age, genetic factors play only a moderate role in general reading backwardness or specific reading retardation. However, when spelling ability was investigated, a heritability of 0.53 was obtained, increasing to 0.75 when intelligence was controlled. Strong genetic influences on spelling were also found when concordance rates for spelling disability were compared for MZ and DZ pairs.