School-Based Collaboration With Families: An Effective Model for a Society in Crisis.

This article extends the work of previous writers in the area of family-school interventions by describing a more assertive and direct model for a society in crisis, one that shifts the ownership of child problem prevention and solution from the therapy office to the school. This model involves all the relevant players in a child's life and provides for the assumption by teachers and other educators of systemic roles in confronting relationship problems between and among teachers, parents, and children that are viewed as the primary causes and maintainers of child home and school problems. It provides a flow chart describing and illustrating intervention steps that can be used by schools to facilitate efficient, systemic interventions in schools. It also provides a grid depicting relationships between parenting styles and various kinds of child behaviors as an essential aid in the design of interventions. Finally, this article comments on the "politics of collaboration," that is, the agendas and issues that militate against the adoption of this model in schools, as well as the implications of this model for the functioning of marital and family therapists. The school-based ecosystemic collaboration model offers an organized, progressive, and alternative schema for dealing with child problems that are presented at school and with home problems about which school staff help is sought.