ABSTRACT
It is rare to come away from a family assessment thinking that one has recommended an easy option. Decisions about a child’s future have to be made, and that usually means that someone is going to suffer, including the child. If a child is going to be reunited with their parents, then they will lose valuable foster parents; if the decision is to remove children from harmful parents, the children will still miss their parents, and will usually try to make contact with them when they become adolescent, however abusive they may have been. Siblings may have to be separated, one parent may lose the right for any direct contact, families in treatment will have to face difficult thoughts and feelings, a child placed with adopted parents may be abused by them. Hence the title of this chapter; there is no perfect answer in this work; there is no certainty. The examples given, taken from my own caseload, try to show something of the complexity of the issues that are addressed in the detail of these kinds of situation. While in each case clear recommendations came out of the assessment process, it took some time to reach them and there were no easy answers.
