Their Home Is Their Castle: Learning to Do In-Home Family Therapy^†

The client's home is emerging as a typical site in which family therapy is delivered, yet training programs tend to train students in an office-based model. This qualitative study examines the process that three student interns went through as they learned to do home-based therapy after having been trained in a clinic setting. All three found that the experience of working in the clients' homes challenged their beliefs about therapy as well as the models of a professional relationship; all reformulated their views on therapy because of this challenge. A model is proposed that describes the students' journey from being a clinic-based to becoming a home-based therapist.