Raising the Stakes in Child-at-Risk Cases Eliciting and Maintaining Parents' Motivation

This paper, the third in a series concerned with family therapy in cases involving children at risk of abuse, describes an approach to maximising parents' interest and commitment to therapy. After overviewing the difficulties faced by therapists in working with parents who are notorious for their ‘resistance’, we provide guidelines for minimising the negative consequences of notification and for constructing therapeutic leverage in order to elicit and maintain parents' motivation throughout the course of therapy.     

Therapeutic Responses to Domestic Violence in Australia: A History of Controversies

This paper reviews controversies about domestic violence occurring in heterosexual relationships discussed in the Australian context by practitioners and academics and published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy over the past three decades. Controversies arose in relation to the provision of therapeutic interventions for domestic violence, primarily in individual and couple counselling and group programs. After a literature review, the following controversial issues are identified: (1) the role of patriarchy: Is a patriarchal culture the main cause of domestic violence? (2) Systemic family therapy and gendered violence: Does systemic family therapy hide men's responsibility for domestic violence? (3) Therapeutic and educational interventions for domestic violence: Does therapy turn a ‘crime’ into a ‘psychological problem’? (4) Men as victims: Do both men and women perpetrate domestic violence in equal measure? (5) It takes two to tango: What part do women play in eliciting men's violence?     

Subset selection of the t best populations

Selection of the “best” t out of k populations has been considered in the indifferece zone formulation by Bachhofer (1954) and in the subset selection formulation by Carroll, Gupta and Huang (1975). The latter approach is used here to obtain conservative solutions for the goals of selecting (i) all the “good” or (ii) only “good” populations, where “good” means having a location parameter among the largest t. For the case of normal distributions, with common unknown variance, tables are produced for implementing these procedures. Also, for this case, simulation results suggest that the procedure may not be too conservative.     

Partitioning with Respect to a Control: Unequal Sample Sizes Case

This article describes a method for partitioning with respect to a control for the situation in which the treatment sample sizes are unequal and also for the situation where the treatment sample sizes are equal except for a few missing values. Calculation of the critical values required for finding confidence limits is discussed and tables are presented for the “almost equal” sample size case. An application of this method to length of stay data for congestive heart failure patients is also provided.     

When Twos are Really Threes: The Triangular Dance in Couple Conflict

In counselling couples therapists frequently observe a pattern of interaction in which one person wants greater intimacy and closeness, whereas the other wants increased distance. This paper examines the distancer-pursuer pattern and its relationship to the triangulation of children, grandparents, in-laws or friends. In therapy, interventions target the distancer-pursuer pattern and problematic triangles. Therapy is based on an understanding of the evolution of the pattern in relation to gender, the initial context of the relationship and “life-time” and “situational” positions.     

Initial Meetings in Child-At-Risk Cases: Developing a Therapist-Family Alliance

Child at risk cases pose some of the greatest challenges to family therapists. This paper outlines an approach to these cases based on a therapy project which incorporated the results of a qualitative research study investigating parents' perceptions of intervention in child-at-risk cases. This paper focuses on initial meetings between therapists and family members, outlining ways to connect with parents, to establish ground rules for subsequent therapy and to develop relationships based on mutual respect and trust.     

An upper bound on a ratio of variances

Several processes may be monitored in terms of their variances relative to each other by the maximum ratio of variances. Based on the observed value an upper confidence bound for the population value is derived and tables are supplied for its implementation. Such bounds may be used when the experimenter wishes to establish that the variances are "not too different". The usual testing of variances for equality is noticed to be inappropriate in such cases.