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Making the Parents as Partners Principle a Reality: The Role of the Alliance

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Abstract

We explore the dimensions of the Parents as Partners principle, the widely touted, but somewhat elusive construct in the literature on treating children with serious mental illness, whose poorly defined boundaries, lack of empirical grounding, and overemphasis on instrumental dimensions attenuates its usefulness as a guide for practice and research. Four major barriers to the realization of this principle are outlined, all of which may impede actualizing partnership in practice and may also inhibit the early formation of a positive clinician/parent alliance, a neglected, though key dimension of true partnership practice. The alliance, which has a long clinical and research history in psychotherapy and behavioral research, and more recently, in a variety of community-based interventions, is a precursor to active client partnership with helpers and to treatment participation, as well as therapeutic in its own right. After reviewing relevant alliance research, we close with a beginning research agenda to incorporate the alliance as an integral component of future conceptualization and research about the Parents as Partners principle.

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  1. The Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

    Leslie B. Alexander (Professor)

  2. School of Social Work, Columbia University, New York

    Martha Morrison Dore (Associate Professor)

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  1. Leslie B. Alexander
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Alexander, L.B., Dore, M.M. Making the Parents as Partners Principle a Reality: The Role of the Alliance. Journal of Child and Family Studies 8, 255–270 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022059127934

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