Session: Off the Couch and Out of the Clinic: Innovations in Research on the Therapeutic Relationship in Community-Based Settings (Research that Promotes Sustainability and (re)Builds Strengths (January 15 - 18, 2009))

Across the helping disciplines, the importance of examining common factors (in particular, the therapeutic alliance) cannot be denied. Yet, when studying helping relationships, can methods and perspectives drawn from psychotherapy adequately address issues that can arise in social work with clients who may enter treatment involuntarily, face myriad stressors, receive services that are not necessarily office-based, or interact with multiple systems concurrently? Given its historic attention to the social context of helping, the field of social work is uniquely poised to forge new understandings of the therapeutic relationship and to join with allied disciplines in developing novel ways to reduce barriers to service engagement. By featuring an array of conceptual frameworks and methodological innovations, this half-day symposium will both reflect on the current status of research on the therapeutic alliance and showcase emergent contemporary perspectives on the helping relationship across a range of community-based settings with children and adults.