The psychosocial approach to family relationships has come under fire from both radical critiques and market forces. David Howe and Diana Hinings defend the approach as one of the foundations of good practice

The six-monthly meeting concerning Ian, aged nine, broke up in disarray. He is in foster care and both his mother and foster father were present at the review. When Ian's behaviour during home visits was discussed, his mother began to criticise him. The foster father, who disapproves of Ian's mother at the best of times, could not contain himself. 'You don't deserve a son like Ian,' he said to her. Ian's mother rushed out of the room shouting: 'You can all consider me dead. That's what you all want, isn't it?'

Ian looked shocked. He was quickly ushered out of the room by his social worker. In the corridor, his mother was still crying. She swore, shouted and complained about her treatment in the meeting. The chairperson came out to speak to her. He suggested that she was not helping Ian by acting in this uncontrolled way. He then added that her comments would be included in the record of the meeting and she could, if she wished, make a formal complaint.

Episodes of this kind are common in child and family social work. People become clients because of worries about either their social behaviour or their social experience. Mothers neglect babies, emotionally or physically. Fathers sexually abuse daughters or sons. Parents argue, and are in a constant state of turmoil and conflict. Children feel anxious or unloved or hurt. Adolescents steal and fight, injure themselves and take drugs. Behind the case notes of every referral and conference are people - such as Ian's mother and foster father - who feel confused, despairing, angry and stressed.

Social and family life is about relationships: how we get into them, how we conduct them, how we experience them. Relationships are where most of us look to satisfy our need for intimacy, security and sharing. But these are hard-won experiences and many people fail to find or sustain them in their relationships with others.

Poverty and stress deplete people's emotional resources, making it hard for them to cope with the trials of being a partner or a parent. Some mothers and fathers have suffered so much loss and adversity in their own childhoods that they find it difficult to cope with the emotional closeness of family life. Once people begin to find social relationships hard going, they find themselves in a downward spiral. Tensions and conflict increase between them and their partners, children, and parents. Problems increase. And the final injustice is that these economic and interpersonal stresses have to be borne by those who have the fewest financial and emotional resources.

Developmental psychologists are showing us the fundamental importance that relationships play in the growth of children's self and social understanding. They suggest that our ability to become socially competent depends not only on our inborn predispositions but also on the quality of our social environment - our parents, family and friends. By this logic, children who suffer adverse social relationships are more likely to grow up unable to understand and cope with the demands of other people. In turn, they are more likely to become unpredictable partners, poor parents - and the next cases on the social worker's desk.

That is why social workers must be deeply interested in the quality and character of people's perceptions of their close relationships. But - as the incident involving Ian and his foster parents reveals - the emotional content of relationships is in increasing danger of being handled by administrative devices rather than psychosocial skills.

Interest in relationships, including the 'social work relationship', was for long the bedrock of good practice. But it has been dismissed and undermined both by radical critiques and by the logic of the market place. It is hard to fathom why those whose ostensible interest is in the developmental well-being of children have lost or abandoned their expertise in the social and the psychological, the emotional and the interpersonal. This is exactly the environment in which personalities form and young minds develop.

In order to make sense of children's needs and behaviour, social workers need to understand the relationship environment that parents and children create. In order to know what is going on between them and their clients, practitioners need the kind of knowledge which enables them to keep their bearings in situations of turbulence and upset. Relationships are the medium in which concerns arise, responses are conducted and outcomes judged. They are the currency of everyday life. Social workers need to be experts in social life.

The more that social workers can understand and work personally - rather than impersonally - with distressed people, the less they will need to resort to legal procedures and bureaucratic guidelines.

A professional who practises with a psychosocial eye can assess cases and make sense of a number of factors which present themselves in their relationships with clients. These include the way people feel about and view themselves; the relationships between parents as partners, and the relationships between parents and their children.

Steadied by such an outlook, the social worker is less likely to be fazed by the emotional ups and downs of difficult cases. They will be able to see children's needs along a developmental pathway and within a cultural context. They will understand people rather than react defensively to them. They will be a resource as well as a 'partner'.

David Howe is professor of social work and Diana Hinings is lecturer, school of social work, University of East Anglia, Norwich. David Howe is author of Attachment Theory for Social Work Practice (Macmillan, 1995)