Value-Based Approaches to Family Intervention

Value-based decision making is implicit in the delivery of family interventions. Ethical intervention planning not only must incorporate the assessment of family needs, but also must consider how alternatives for meeting those needs compare to the values held by the family. Professionals have an ethical responsibility to choose interventions that strengthen families as well as address specific family needs. This paper describes a strategy for evaluating alternatives in family interventions using the values framework forwarded by Hobbs et al. (1984). A practitioners' checklist for family interventions is presented as a guide for assessing the consistency of proposed interventions with the values framework.