Therapists working with child abuse in public agencies are positioned between the family and the larger welfare systems and between parent and child. A practical examination of the personal and therapeutic problems and social issues that surround child abuse intervention is presented in this monograph. Therapy must address the values and premises that support abusive and authoritarian practices. A two-year therapy project successfully applied insights to practice. The text is presented in 10 chapters. Part 1, "Child Abuse in Context," addresses how child abuse intervention is conceptualized: (1) Why Are Child-at-Risk Cases So Difficult? (2) Routes to Therapy; (3) Becoming a Client of "the Welfare"; (4) Working-Class Life and the Family Ideal; and (5) The Genealogy of Relationships. Part 2, "The Therapist as Power Broker," describes an approach to working in therapy with families in which there are allegations of child abuse: (6) Initial Meetings: Earning the Parents' Trust; (7) Working with "the Welfare" in Child-at-Risk Cases; (8) Raising the Stakes in Child-at-Risk Cases: Eliciting and Maintaining Parents' Motivation; (9) Rewriting the Story of Abuse; and (10) Creating a Relationship Discourse. References, Indices and a report on the research project are appended. (EMK)