Thinking About Multi-Agency Work with Substance Abusers and Their Families: A Language Systems Approach

All therapists who have worked with cases in which substance abuse was defined by someone as a problem can produce an exhaustive list of the kinds of challenges and dilemmas that this work presents. This paper will present and discuss the challenges and dilemmas inherent in a question posed by a seminar organized by counselors in a substance abuse project. The question “How can we strengthen and improve professional cooperation across agency boundaries in cases with parental substance abuse?” was addressed from the perspective of a collaborative language systems approach. The paper specifically highlights the value of talking about the problem of substance abuse from a “multiple realities” perspective versus thinking of substance abuse as an “entity” and the values of “professional cooperation and respect” versus “privileged positions and ideas”.