How are we doing? Results of receiving family-driven feedback on alliances between families and residential treatment staff over time

Abstract Developing working alliances and actively engaging families is essential for youth success in residential treatment. Ideally, these alliances can be fostered by sharing feedback with residential staff about their alliances with families over time to encourage more family engagement and better outcomes for families of youth in treatment. This study measured alliances between families and residential treatment family workers and assessed the effectiveness of an unobtrusive method of sharing working alliance feedback with residential treatment staff. Results revealed that family members rated the working alliance higher than family workers, and that these discrepancies in scores converged over time. In addition, higher family member ratings of the alliance predicted higher family functioning, and longer time in treatment resulted in higher family functioning scores. Lastly, receiving feedback about the working alliance resulted in higher family member ratings of the alliance with their family worker.