School-based social work and family therapy.

This paper discusses the importance of family therapy as part of the armamentarium of school-based social work. It provides a rationale for school-based intervention, noting that the school represents for the child the one fixed point (i.e., constant experience) in an endlessly changing world. The author believes that family therapy should be emphasized in school because school social workers are in a strategic position to thoroughly assess family dysfunction. Further, he notes that unless adolescents' problems are understood in the context of improperly functioning families, any help provided will be impermanent at best.