The following article outlines the Safety First Model for working with high-risk young people in crisis. This hierarchical model prioritises emotional and physical safety by using multi-systemic and family-based interventions. A typical case example is used to illustrate the model and the structures and strategies employed at each level. The intervention model empowers families, facilitates their connections with other providers, and minimises the need for hospital admissions. The model also promotes collaborative and systemic practice in a child and adolescent mental health service.

In this article I review the changes in thinking about childhood depression since the 1950s, with an emphasis on the struggles to find language for childhood depression. My interface with these changes is described, with a particular focus on the development of the Children's Depression Scale (CDS). Clinical applications of family therapy using the CDS in treatment of childhood depression are then illustrated with a composite case example. The idea is developed that depression in children can be seen as a blocked communication, and that increasing emotional expressiveness in families is an appropriate therapeutic aim and intervention. The relevance of the historical context to current practice is considered.

The following conversation describes a narrative means of uncovering (or ‘deconstructing’) some of the invisible forces that undermine parents' capacities in caring for their children in preferred ways. In the authors' experience, parents can be hugely resourceful and provide a clear account of what they ‘should’ be doing, yet seem unable to act upon their own good advice – it is as though an external agent, named below as ‘Virus X’, prevents them from being the parents they would like to be. Through naming this external agent, identifying its influences and noticing parents' acts of resistance in the face of these influences, antidotes to Virus X can be developed. This paper describes the development of such an approach within a child behaviour management group. In keeping with the playful approach encouraged by narrative therapy, the authors of this paper join forces to act as investigative journalists in exposing Virus X to the readers.

This article is concerned with the experience of infants who endure long hospitalisations. It explores the concept of the baby as subject; that is, infants as active, psychic participants in their earliest relationships. It explores therapeutic possibilities with hospitalised infants from an infant mental health perspective. It advocates for family therapists to equip themselves for infant–parent therapeutic work.

The author attempts to discern themes underlying his clinical practice. Although his approach is somewhat behaviourist in orientation, it is hoped that the 12 themes (or organising principles) can be compared and contrasted with those arising from other approaches to child, adolescent, and family work. The author invites readers to analyse the way they have pieced together a composite approach from a range of sources.

Jeff Young talks about having been trained to be formal with clients, and his gradual realisation that he could return to the more direct ways of speech he learned as a child, and combine that with warmth. He found that clients and fellow professionals welcomed a therapist who did not ‘beat around the bush’. Together, Jeff and Ron talk about when directness is appropriate, and how directness needs to be modified for particular clients.