Discussing Assessment Findings with Families

The interpersonal context within behavioral family intervention is a potentially important determinant of therapy outcome. This paper highlights the importance of identifying and explicating specific consultation skills associated with successful clinical outcomes. The discussion of assessment findings with families is an important phase of therapy for laying the foundations for skill training. These discussions are important in developing a working relationship with the family and for creating appropriate expectations of therapy process and outcome. A guided participation model of information transfer is described and illustrated with examples from the author’s work with families of behaviourally disturbed children. Commonly encountered difficulties are highlighted and possible solutions to individual consultation problems are proposed. Specific suggestions are made for enhancing therapy outcome with difficult to treat families and those at high risk of dropping out of therapy. Implications of this work for research into the mechanism of change in behavioral family intervention are discussed.