Systemic Therapy for Families of Children with Complex Health Needs: Initial Reflections and Case Examples

ABSTRACT

This ‘In Practice’ paper provides reflections and common themes encountered in setting up a systemic family therapy clinic in a community service that supports children with a variety of complex health needs (including disabilities and life‐limiting conditions). In doing so, we discuss ways to attend to the experience of the whole family, which is often overlooked, by drawing on a broad range of systemic theory and practice. Rather than focus on a particular condition or ‘stage of care’, we share our reflections of supporting families with wide‐ranging needs at different points in their journey. Three anonymised examples are provided, spanning early diagnosis, adolescence and bereavement. Initial qualitative feedback is shared from each of these families, collected routinely using the Experience of Service Questionnaire. A common focus is shared on supporting different family members to communicate and understand each other's experiences of, and responses to, the child's complex health needs. We suggest that family therapy clinics could be a welcome, and potentially cost‐effective, addition to individual psychological therapies. Suitably trained practitioners can utilise existing systemic intervention in the context of child health, with techniques and theory adapted and expanded to focus on the role of, and relationship to, various complex child health needs. Suggestions are made for further research and practice development.