Child Psychology and Psychiatry

A DIFFERENT SORT OF EVIDENCE
Narrative/postmodernist family therapists would
argue that an exclusive reliance on knowledge
drawn from RCTs of manualized approaches to
treatment ignores the more ‘local’ knowledge and
expertise in managing difficulties developed by
clinicians, clients, families, services and commu-
nities. This can be disempowering and unhelpful
to families. Fredman [22], in contrast, illustrates
how clinicians’ knowledge and expertise, com-
bined with specific knowledge gained during the
therapeutic encounter, can help bereaved families.
An alternative method of gaining ‘practice-
based evidence’ has been described by Young and
Cooper [23] whereby families who had received
therapy reviewed tapes of their own clinical ses-
sions. Families were asked to stop the tape at
‘meaningful moments’ and then interviewed. The
following themes were generated:
•
Family members commented upon the impor-
tance of their