Ethical issues for the family therapist can be complex when treatment of the family involves several members whose needs are conflicting. Such techniques as encouraging ventilation of hostile feelings, forming alliances with particular family members, and requiring reluctant members to attend sessions raise important ethical questions. Also., the principle of confidentiality is less clear when the entire family is in treatment. The authors recommend that systematic ethics training include examination of the therapist's own values and biases, as well as issues of honesty and competency, as part of professional training and continuing education programs.

This paper describes the efforts of the faculty of the Family Institute of New Jersey in recent years to develop a collaborative family training program that takes into account issues of gender, race, culture, class, and sexual orientation. We have come to realize how strongly traditional approaches have been skewed in the direction of the dominant culture--white, male, heterosexist, and prioritizing the needs and experience of the middle and upper classes. We have attempted to modify our teaching, supervision, reading lists, and overall training approach to challenge trainees and ourselves to move toward broader, strength-based, and equity-based multicultural perspectives in our training. We describe our vision, how we incorporate it into our program structure, and a few of our training initiatives.

Black Lives Matter is a clarion call for racial equality and racial justice. With the arrival of Africans as slaves in 1619, a racial hierarchy was formed in the United States. However, slavery is commonly dismissed as that less than noble aspect of the United States' history without really confronting the legacies of racial inequality and racial injustice left in its wake. White supremacy, based on the myths of white superiority and Black inferiority, have obscured racial inequality and racial injustice, resulting in blaming the victims. Using Black Lives Matter as a platform, we focus on some key considerations for theory, research, education, training, and practice in clinical, community, and larger systems contexts. Broadly, we focus on Black Lives Matter, literally; Black dehumanization; historical oppression; healing; and implications for the field of family therapy. More specifically, we draw attention to health disparities, mass incarceration and aggressive policing, intergenerational racial trauma, restorative justice, and antiracist work.

Ethnic background and cultural roots affect how individuals think, feel, and behave. These factors have only recently begun to be considered in family therapy training and practice. Differences among groups need to be valued and integrated into family therapy practice. The authors provide an overview of ethnic and cultural issues in clinical work with African American, Hispanic, Irish, Asian Indian, and Jewish clients.

The findings strongly suggest that the theory of planned behavior provides a potentially useful conceptual framework for guiding the creation of interventions for African American and Latino adolescents that are designed to reduce violent behavior and the tragedies that such behavior leaves in its wake.