Core principles of assessment and therapeutic communication with children, parents and families: towards the promotion of child and family wellbeing

Core principles of assessment and therapeutic communication with children, parents and families: towards the promotion of child and family wellbeing, by Ruth Schmidt Neven, London, Routledge, 2010, 192 pp., £22.99, ISBN 978-0-415-55242-4

The sub-title of this book: ‘Towards the promotion of child and family wellbeing’ is the real heart of this accessible and important guide for professionals working with

children, young people and their families. Its significance extends far beyond the cogent and helpful reminders of what an assessment is for, and how one goes about doing one. The principles laid out in a clear and readable format reflect the richly distilled experience of a child psychotherapist who has, over 30 years of working in mental health services in the UK and since 1989, in Australia, constructed a vision of what has and is happening to services for children. In the guise of a guide for practitioners, Schmidt Neven has incorporated a bold statement of values and a social commentary on the dire effects of recent trends in mental health services. I would recommend these concise four pages as the most eloquent description of the failure of ideas in child and adolescent mental health programmes and policies and a rationale for returning to core values, which I have read anywhere.

‘At a time when professionals and practitioners are confronted by a bewildering array of therapies as “cure alls”, this book is intended to counter a fragmented approach to work with children, parents and families and the important people in their lives’ (p. 3) … It ‘presents a critique of those aspects of current child and family mental health practices that are not considered to be in the best interests of children and young people’ (p. 4).

The critique involves several inter-related principles, which are spelled out in the first chapter: that all behaviour is meaningful and that understanding individual behaviour requires attention to its context, which includes the inter-relationsh