Academic and Research

Academic and Research Committee (ARC)

Academic and Research Development Officer :

Professor Peter Stratton

SCORE update

We are pleased (overjoyed actually) to report that the first stage of research to develop the SCORE measure has been successfully completed. A full account of its development, and of the evidence we have that it is a viable measure of therapeutic change, has been submitted to the Journal of Family Therapy. We now have something of a dilemma because, while we are enthusiastic about the way the SCORE has performed we are also aware that we have not yet got as far as proving that it does what it was designed for: to indicate therapeutic change. So we are making it available but do not want to give an impression that it can be presented to managers or in research, as a fully established instrument. For that we need active help from family therapists throughout the UK.

The article in the current Context describes something of the lengthy process of getting the SCORE to this point and you can access the final version of the SCORE 15 here.

SCORE is a self-report outcome measure designed to be sensitive to the kinds of changes in family functioning that systemic family and couples therapists see as indications of useful therapeutic change. It is intended to be serviceable in everyday practice; short, acceptable to clients and usable across the full range of our work: the full range of presenting problems, the clientele, and the formats of work: At least, individual, couple and family. It can be read in terms of second order change; structural change; change in the stories the family members have about their family; change in systemic processes within the family; in an orientation to solutions; improvements in relation to hopefulness, agency, hostility, risk, blaming, happiness and so on. All in 15 questions

The current achievement is that we have a short version of SCORE which has 15 descriptions of aspects of family life and process, along with other indicators of the state of the family. The research that created the SCORE 15 showed that the earlier 40 items were all useful so the SCORE 40 is also available as a more detailed, probably research, instrument. Meanwhile Alan Carr and his group in Dublin took the same SCORE 40 an have created a 28 item version that is entirely compatible with, but more detailed than our 15 item short form.

So we are now able to offer the SCORE 15 which fits on a single A4 sheet. It can be used as an overall measure of family functioning but will also generate ‘sub-scale’ scores from the 5 items on each of three dimensions:

1.  Strengths and adaptability

2.  Overwhelmed by difficulties

3.  Disrupted communication

Now we need to move on to discovering how well the SCORE does what it was designed for: Showing therapeutic change.  We need therapists to use it with their families in a standard way and feed the results back to us. Only then will we be able to claim that systemic and family therapies have a trustworthy  way of proving their effectiveness. So we urgently need every family therapist who is serious about the future of family therapy in this country to collaborate with us in this crucial stage.

Please please do contact us for information about how to join the crucial enterprise at: p.m.stratton@ntlworld.com

The SCORE development team: Julia Bland (Principle Investigator), Peter Stratton, Emma Janes, Judith Lask and Annie Peppiatt.

Your chance to influence NICE
about what matters to you

The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, the body responsible for NHS clinical practice guidelines and health promotion, has a continual process of review. The process works by NICE first announcing consultations on the scope of what each set of guidelines will cover, then issuing draft guidelines for comment before announcing final recommendations. AFT has successfully influenced previous NICE activities to take more account of  systemic and family concerns. Invitations to contribute often come with short notice. AFT wants to be better prepared to respond quickly, and is creating a register of members with relevant expertise who are willing to contribute to NICE consultations .

This is an invitation for you join the AFT register, and to provide brief details of your areas of particular experience and interest. Please email your details to s.kennedy@aft.org.uk

more information on NICE guidelines and how these relate to Family and Systemic Psychotherapy

Practitioner Research Networks

An essential objective of the ARC is to encourage family therapy practitioners to form Practitioner Research Networks (PRN's). Many practitioners would like to be involved in research but their context does not allow them to initiate projects on their own. By working collaboratively, a group of practitioners can create significant research findings and, because the project is designed by and for practitioners, these projects are likely to have direct clinical usefulness. Through the wonders of the internet, these networks do not even need to be confined to a single country.

Do contact Peter Stratton if you would like to be involved: p.m.Stratton@ntlworld.com.

Initiatives towards PRN's are being fostered by ARC, by the UKCP and EFTA research committees and we are attempting to make this an active issue in the AcSS. See information about all of these below.

Research initiatives

The ARC committee is keen to support research in every way it can. As an example, Chris Evans directed us to an NHS initiative to fund a trial of family therapy for adolescent self harm. The ARC supported the idea which was taken forward by David Cottrell and Allan House in Leeds and Ivan Eisler at IoP. A major proposal has been submitted and approved and is now underway. The ARC expects a productive involvement with the  national Centre for Family Therapy and Systemic Research which has been proposed by the Tavistock Clinic and has been approved as a research centre by the University of East London.

If you know of availability of relevant research funding or of a project that might be more likely to get off the ground with support from ARC, please let us know.

ACADEMIC

The ARC continues to explore possibilities of establishing a Professorship of family therapy research. We have proposed to the Board that AFT might either directly support a post or fund some fund-raising towards the objective.

With support and guidance from Nick Child we now have a comprehensive collection of Google groups for different interests within family therapy. The lists continue to be a highly productive sharing of ideas and the international MultiJFTForum has taken the form of a continuous three-week cycle of discussions of journal articles, in place of the set-piece major discussion of one article from each of the three journals each year.

ARC also participates in the Student Essay Prize and the Educational Fund for Creative Thinking

WIDER PERSPECTIVES

AFT’s Professional Officers are working together to maximise our contribution and to have clear division of responsibilities. Peter Stratton, as Chair of the UKCP research committee is participating in the extensive review of the future of UKCP in the context of registration activities being taken over by a Government body. We are also involved wherever possible in the way the Increasing Access to Psychological Treatments (IAPT) project is developing.

We continue to work with the European Family Therapy Association (EFTA) especially through its research committee chaired by Peter Stratton and the Training and Membership Committee. Which connects back to the contribution of the UKCP research committee work on specifying standards for research training in psychotherapy.

The ARC continues to thrive with your help and support (see our pages on the AFT website). We hope to meet with you and receive ideas for exciting new initiatives at the AFT Conferences. If you might want to join us in this work, either as a committee member or by supporting the ARC in a specific area of its work, please contact:

Peter Stratton, ARC Development Officer.

Arlene Vetere, Chair of ARC

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Other Possible Activities and issues

If you have thoughts about any of them, do let me ( Peter Stratton) know.

• Increasing family therapy input to universities and establishing Chairs of Family Therapy.
• Getting adequate funding from Universities.
• Coordinated research in training courses and networked practitioner projects.
• Not letting ethics committee procedures prevent trainees and practitioners from undertaking research.
• To move towards having dissertations written in a form that facilitates conversion to a journal article, probably combined with electronic submission.

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