Individual family centres tend to develop tend the limes of either therapeutic work with referred families or mare general resource provision and community work approaches with the families in a particular neighbourhood. The article looks at the benefits of adopting an integrated programme which combines therapeutic work with a resource provision and a community work approach. The benefits are seen to be those of addressing the approach factors in the stress of individual families, encouraging participation, decreasing stigmatisation and aiding personal and group change. Issues of implementation are also discussed. Two of the most important of these are seen to be producing an appropriate and balanced local image of the centre and maintaining the child protection role.