Six different approaches to manualisation from the Leeds Family Therapy and Research Centre.

Peter Stratton, Helen Pote

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

The Leeds Family Therapy & Research Centre (LFTRC) has a tradition of combining research with practice and then rigorously formulating its processes to make them available to other users in published documents. The result has been a series of six manuals created for different purposes, with correspondingly different formats. They reflect both our wish to undergo the discipline of rigorously specifying therapeutic procedures for training and also to provide a sound basis for research into families and family therapy. This chapter presents each product in turn with an intention first to widen the concept of forms that manuals can take, and then to draw conclusions about the advantages and limitations of different approaches. We present first a manual for a specialised approach to researching family therapy session: the Leeds Attributional Coding System Manual (1988); secondly an attempt to create a parallel version for analysing attachment processes in therapy sessions (1995); third a manual for independent practitioners and trainers Family Therapy: Training and Practice (1990) which was published as a book so that it would be widely available. We then offer a detailed account of the Leeds Systemic Family Therapy Manual (2000) which was created on the basis of the need to be able to conduct Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) in which the form of therapy is clearly specified, but which we also find has been used extensively by systemic therapists. Extending beyond LFTRC we describe a comprehensive account of systemic therapist competences which was itself created through a detailed analysis of successful systemic therapy manuals (2010). The sixth example is a manual for the SCORE Index of Family Functioning, which is reported in Chapter X. We conclude by drawing together what we have learned about effective uses of manuals from these varied experiences.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHandbook of Systemic Approaches to Psychotherapy Manuals:
Subtitle of host publicationIntegrating Research, Practice, And Training. EFTA series
EditorsPeter Stratton, George Saba, Mauro Mariotti
PublisherSpringer
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 6 Oct 2020

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