Family Therapy in a the Context of the Law

Family Therapy is a complex process, not a family assessment or family mediation notwithstanding the fact that it may include some aspects of both. It is not individual people doing individual therapy concurrently. Family Therapy is a robust and somewhat unpredictable process that engages the entire family in a dialogue with and through the practitioner, together and separately, worked out with the key parties, to make a difference that will make a difference. If no difference is made, there is no change.

Ordinarily this difference is contextual, in the interaction and relationships between people, notwithstanding the fact that individual family members may internalize such difference and make changes of their own.

From the outset the practitioner searches for that difference, which may be negotiated by the parties, presented by one party, appear in the dialogue between, come from a child, be created by the practitioner, or come from someone or somewhere else.

The skilled practitioner can recognize a potential difference, name it, embrace it, and amplify it, into a durable family altering change. The practitioner must be skilled in observing, participating in, and intervening in the interactions between people. Family Therapy includes children and privileges the voice of the child. The emotional consequences of family fracture are most often carried by the child.

The voice and opinion of the practitioner is always in play notwithstanding the clinical requirement to be even-handed. Agreement and being even-handed may be inappropriate and oppressive under some circumstances (e.g., child protection, abuse, control, and violence).

There are many models of Family Therapy, each proposing a relationship between the inside socio-relational and the outside neurobiological, and a relationship between the past, present, and future. The Bower Place approach has a strong future and socio-relational focus – what will the future include and not include, for whom, when, where, and how, how to get there, and what stands in the way? It is contextual, deeply optimistic, and premised upon the idea that people change for the better when the constraints to change are removed.

Family Therapy to some degree relies upon the parties not engaging in inappropriate secrecy and deception and relies on the parties acting or at least intending to act in the best interests of their children and acting to protect those children from the downside of family disintegration, conflict, and violence. Whilst people may intend to act in the best interests of their children their actions do not always reflect that intention. This is a matter that ordinarily needs to be addressed in the therapeutic process.

Family Therapy and the Law

Deception over the ordinary functional matters of daily family life is not uncommon but deception in relationship to the care and protection of children is fundamental. The Family Therapy process cannot continue when it was clear that someone in the process is lying about the care and protection of any of their children. Family Therapy cannot proceed when that is the case.

The presence of intentional and deliberate lying and deception on the part of one of the parents in a matter leaves the children of that relationship vulnerable in any Family Therapy process. These are the lies of commission not omission, and when such lies involve sexualized behaviour in relationship to a child or children, it is not possible to proceed without addressing such matters and determining the extent to which such sexualized behaviour has corrupted the entire set of family relationships. This immediately becomes a Child Protection matter and not a Family Therapy matter. These are matters for the Department for Child Protection and this Court to address. The practitioner’s authority implicit in the referral and agreement for Family Therapy is dissolved and transferred to DCP and returned to this Court.

Sexual Boundaries and the Family

A boundary is defined as who can participate with whom, over what, when, where, and how. Boundaries are a central organisational principle in families and family life the world-over. Families have boundaries around money, domestic work, limit setting with children, sex, sexuality and sexual interaction, illness, external threats, food, bodily functions, washing, cleaning, relationships with other people, and so on. In many respects boundaries define normal. Most relational and interactional boundaries are consistent across communities, societies, and cultures. All societies have nuanced and micro-detailed boundaries and rules about who can and cannot interact sexually with whom. These rules and boundaries run deep inside this country and culture, and all the cultures that have arrived here through migration processes. The uniformity around these boundaries across cultures and societies is impressive. What this means is that any member of this community that does not understand this is seriously out of step with that society. Unless a person is delusional or experiencing the ravages of some form of brain injury, it is not possible for that person not to grasp the fact that sexual boundaries are inviolate, notwithstanding the sexual transformation that has taken place in this society over the past fifty years. The blurring of these line leaves children vulnerable.