• •Systemic Family Therapy Goes to School

The authors describe the systemic family treatment approach that underlies an innovative program for children with severe school problems. The program is jointly operated by a community mental health agency and a public school system. • The development of family systems theory and family therapy models in the past 20 years has stimulated many mental health professionals working with children to reevaluate existing treatment approaches and to design new ones. Clinicians have found that involving parents in efforts to change their child ' s behavior has offered possibilities for more effective and lasting solutions to prob-lem behavior than has individual treatment alone. Serious, chronic, and complicated school behavior problems are one arena in which parents need to be involved to solve the difficulties. Working with families of troubled children within the school is not easy, however. This article proposes that a specially designed systemic approach is necessary to treat children's behavior problems at school and presents a model treatment program-the Special Education and Treatment (SET) Program-and its theoretical underpinnings. This model brings principles of systemic family therapy into the classroom and provides some ideas about creating change and effective problem solving