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ANZ J of Family Therapy - 2025 - McIntosh - Contrasting Team and Co‐Therapy Approaches to a Walk‐In Family Therapy Program290.58 kB
Published VersionCC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Contrasting Team and Co‐Therapy Approaches to a Walk‐In Family Therapy Program
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, Vol.46(3), pp.1 -14
2025
Abstract
Policy calls for family-inclusive, single-session approaches to mental health challenges are growing. In response, an online, single-session family therapy approach, Walk-In Together (WIT), was successfully piloted in a small team format in a specialist setting. For wider implementation, including in mental health services, use of a team for WIT sessions was a clear resource barrier. This small qualitative study examined the viability of a co-therapy approach to WIT sessions. For a 4-month period, families were allocated to one of two WIT program formats. Ten completed the two-therapist format, and six the team format. Sixteen family members participated in semi-structured individual interviews, exploring their experiences of the WIT service. Four therapists participated in a focus group about working in the differently sized co-therapy models. Descriptive qualitative analyses consider similarity and difference in the experiences of these two ways of working. For family members, strong similarity of session experience, essential change elements and nature of impact was evident between the two formats. In contrast, therapists showed some preference for the team format, particularly with complex presentations and training contexts, yet fully endorsed a two-therapist format in resource limited contexts. From family and therapist perspectives, essential change was equally achieved in the team and co-therapy formats. The benefit of a WIT session for family members appears to lie more with timely response, transparent engagement and well-contained process and less with the number of therapists providing these functions. We describe ways in which the current study may inform research and support implementation.
Details
- Title
- Contrasting Team and Co‐Therapy Approaches to a Walk‐In Family Therapy Program
- Authors
- Jennifer McIntosh (Corresponding Author) - La Trobe UniversityNaomi Rottem - La Trobe UniversityZoe Cloud - La Trobe UniversitySandra Kuntsche - La Trobe UniversityMartin Pradel - La Trobe UniversityFelicity Painter - La Trobe UniversityMohajer Hameed - La Trobe UniversityEliza Hartley - La Trobe University
- Publication details
- Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, Vol.46(3), pp.1 -14
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1002/anzf.70014
- ISSN
- 1467-8438; 0814-723X
- Copyright note
- This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.© 2025 The Author(s). Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian Association of Family Therapy (AAFT).
- Grant note
- This work was supported by School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991149537702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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