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Concise Guide to Marital and Family Therapy By Leslie B. Kadis and Ruth McClendon. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press. 1998. 245 pp. £21. 95 (pb). ISBN 0-88048-775-5

lies less in the recent literature review on child and family assessment (Part One) but more the practical issues involved in assessment (Part Two). Emphasis on the developmental perspective informs the family approach throughout the text; ethical dilemmas are given due consideration. Many texts stress the importance of utilising information gained from assessment to inform therapeutic strategies for individual families, few texts, however, describe so clearly how to set out a therapeutic strategy which is user-friendly for the child, the family and the practitioner. In a wide-ranging, entertaining and stimulating discourse about the relationship between scientific assessment and clinical practice (Part Three) the reader is invited to challenge traditional scientific approaches to family assessment, to adopt a postmodernist stance, when dealing with the complex variables inherent to child and family therapy and the multiple systems within which such work takes place. Increasingly, within the field of mental health the test of any assessment and treatment model is that of universal applicability. Very recently at a national meeting in Birmingham the feasibility of family therapy within secure services for children and adults was addressed. The Darlington System, central to this second edition, has much to offer everyone working with those children and families perceived as complex, high-need, high-risk and perceived by many as being impossible to engage in meaningful family assessment and treatment. The book would be a useful addition to multidisciplinary departmental libraries and a good focus for multi-agency discussion on this important area of clinical work.