Who Is the Client? Role Clarity and Contracting in Professional Intervention Work

Matt Brown • 2026-08-11

Ask ten interventionists who is the client in intervention work and you will get at least three different answers: the family who hired you, the loved one who needs treatment, or the family system as a whole. That ambiguity is not academic. It shapes what you promise, what you disclose, whose interests you protect when they conflict, and what you do when the person paying your fee asks for something the engagement should not deliver.