Assessing Family Relationships

Assessing Family Relationships shows mental health professionals how to utilize the Family Life Space Drawing (the FLSD), a family assessment tool that incorporates information from multiple family members while building connections between the clinician and the client. In this manual, Theresa A. Beeton and Ronald A. Clark demonstrate the usefulness of the FLSD in both family and couple counseling. As a task-centered assessment tool, the FLSD enables an interactive and personalized process of counseling, which helps individuals to express concerns and information about themselves in an indirect and nonthreatening manner. Chapters are illustrated throughout with case studies and drawings adapted from the authors' own clinical experience, and the manual offers an overview of the history of the FLSD, as well as where future research is headed. Providing a practical explanation of how to complete the FLSD process, Assessing Family Relationships will be highly relevant to couple and family therapists, as well as clinical social workers, who are interested in updating their practice with innovative family assessment research and techniques.

Theresa A. Beeton, Phd, LCSW practices as a social worker with a wide range of counseling experience. Currently she is in private practice working with couples and families. Her past professional experiences includework with adoptions, foster care, crisis intervention, as well as many mental health conerns. Additionally, she has taught social workers and mental health students in three different university settings. Ronald A. Clark, MSW, LCSW is a private practitioner in the area of couple counseling and family therapy. In addition to providing direct services to clients of all ages and backgrounds, he has been a faculty member of The Catholic University of America teaching graduate students of social work. He came to the mental health field after serving as a Marine Corps officer.

1. Introducing Methods of Family Assessment 2. The Family Life Space Drawing: History and Development of the Process 3. Theories Behind the Family Life Space Process 4. Ten Steps to complete the Family Life Space Drawing (FLSD) 5. Interpreting the Symbolic Representations of the Family Life Space Drawing 6. The Individual Family Life Space Drawing (FLSD) 7. Family Life Space Drawing (FLSD): Examples with Couples 8. Family Life Space Drawing (FLSD) with Families 9. Family Life Space Drawing (FLSD) in Various Counseling Settings 10. Family Life Space Drawing and Research: Past, Present, and Future