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The use of client feedback in clinical supervision provides a way for supervisors to access clients' experiences of the treatment process and monitor clinical progress of their trainees' cases. The present qualitative study investigated a marriage and family therapy training programme's early experience of introducing the Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC®; Pinsof et al., 2009) into clinical supervision. Supervisors (N = 8) and trainees (N = 14) were interviewed to elicit their experience using the STIC in supervision with a focus on understanding the frequency of use as well as the facilitators and constraints to implementation. The analysis of the narratives resulted in the development of five themes (time, supervisors' expectations, broader training system influences, client feedback training, and perceived helpfulness) that contributed to decreased usage over time. Recommendations to the field for integrating client feedback into empirically informed training and supervision are provided. Practitioner points: Training programmes should consider the potential benefits of utilizing client feedback measures for outcome‐based training and supervisionTraining programmes adopting a client feedback measure need to be aware of the potential challenges of implementationThe additional time needed to use a client feedback measure in the clinical supervision process must be considered as it is the most notable constraint to implementation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Couple and family therapy has well‐established benefits. Although the majority of clients benefit, some worsen, some show no positive change, and some drop out early. This suggests that existing treatment modalities require further advancement. One promising avenue to achieve advancement involves instituting, as the standard of care, formalized client feedback, which has been shown to improve outcomes. This paper is a non‐systematic review that outlines several formalized feedback systems currently available and highlights each system's utility with application to couple and family therapy. While couple and family therapists have unique obstacles in therapy due to multiple therapeutic alliances, the use of formalized feedback has potential to strengthen alliances and improve outcomes for all clients who participate. We advocate for the use of formalized feedback in the training of new therapists and to augment the supervision process. Practitioner points: Encourage the couple and family therapy field to implement the use of formalized client feedback systems both clinically and in researchDemonstrate the importance of implementing formalized client feedback systems to decrease premature termination and improve client outcomesProvide information about existing client feedback systems to give practitioners the opportunity to choose a method that most benefits their clients [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several approaches to couple therapy produce large and clinically significant reductions in relationship distress. However, 25 to 30 per cent of couples show no benefit from couple therapy. Adapted forms of couple therapy can effectively treat some psychological disorders and enhance adjustment to physical health problems. The specific mechanisms underlying the effects of couple therapy on relationship distress are unclear. Current attempts to enhance the efficacy of couple therapy have three foci: (1) identifying the common factors that might account for change across approaches, (2) integrating different approaches to address specific needs of particular partners and couples and (3) monitoring the progress of couples during therapy and using that information to modify couple therapy as required. Given the high prevalence of relationship distress and its association with other problems, clinicians should routinely screen for relationship distress in adults. Couple therapy needs to be considered as the focus, or part of the focus, of treatment for a wide range of adult emotional and behavioural problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]