Can a Family Therapist do Statutory Work?

Despite a clear interest in problems such as child abuse it appears that family therapists could work more extensively and constructively with statutory presentations. This paper proposes three reasons as partial explanation for the difficulty many therapists have in working with statutory cases. These reasons are: (i) a belief that social control is not the business of therapy, (ii) a belief in a particular and restrictive notion of neutrality, and (iii) a practice habit of talking less than directly to clients. The existence and persistence of these constraints to the effective provision of statutory services is related to the historical tradition which largely structures professional/client relationships. It is argued that this pattern is highly implicit in our work and can therefore act to restrict our practice and our ability to envisage alternatives.