Outreach redefined: the impact on staff attitudes of a family education project

We decided to implement a family education program in our methadone maintenance clinic as a means of reaching out to family members. In the course of designing and implementing the program, we uncovered a variety of problems concerned with staff's perception of their roles and their attitudes toward parents. This paper discusses the growing awareness of these problems, which seem to be of significant generic importance to any agency involved in setting up a new program. We also discuss the effects of these problems, attempts at resolution, and suggest some general criteria for evaluation.