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This paper is about ethical issues that arise in different sorts of work with families. The particular focus is on a recently established schools project run by a small charity in which therapists apply a psychoanalytic approach to the work with children, teachers, and parents in a local community. Distinguishing between this kind of “psychotherapy with families” and more formal family therapy, I suggest that, in both cases, ethical issues are closely related to principles of good practice, such as proper boundaries, confidentiality, and containment, but that in this deprived community situation, these principles appear to clash with therapists' critical concerns about the already prevailing danger of “turning a blind eye” to unacceptable conditions of deprivation, abuse, and violence. Where the loss of traditional preventive services combines with a culture of apathy and helplessness, the therapist in close contact with child and/or parents may be the only one in a position to register a serious need for something to be done. What must they do? Practice and ethical issues require to be thought about anew, while remaining within the therapists' analytic frame of reference.