This reproduction of a paper comes from the AFT Newsletter (February 1987), 7/1, pp 7-9. AFT is the Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK. You can download the PDF below.
The paper begins with its own explanation of the context - that of our informal review of referrals from our community Child and Adolescent Mental Health service to nearby specialist in-patient units.
All of us in the small multi-disciplinary team worked within a family systems approach to providing the service - although none of us was a proper family therapist. This approach explains the family systems thinking in this review of referrals. And it explains why the article was published in a family therapy magazine.