The last year has seen some positive steps forward for the ANZJFT, building on the efforts of previous years and with thanks to the hard work of the editor Glenn Larner, the subscriptions manager Pat Manolas, and the board and advisory panel.

The term ‘single session therapy’ (SST) is a great misnomer, given that almost universally, it would seem, about half the clients who are seen within this approach go on to engage in further therapy work, with a small percentage engaging in long-term therapy. It is not, as some critics (and researchers) assume, the same as offering only one session of therapy. So why call it single session therapy?

The three main findings of studies conducted by Hoyt, Rosenbaum, and myself during the years 1986–1990 at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, were:

1. 1. Single session is the most common length of psychotherapy.

2. 2. The first session in psychotherapy is potentially the most therapeutic and often has the greatest influence on the outcome of therapy.

3. 3. Single session therapy (SST) is the most cost-effective mode of therapy.

In 2001 Bloom produced a comprehensive review of single-session approaches to therapy (SST). In his paper he outlined the concept of single session therapy and considered the evidence that could be used to support implementation of single session approaches. At the time, Bloom's was probably the most comprehensive review of research on single session therapy available: he considered papers that provided overviews of approaches to developing and delivering single-session treatment, as well as papers that used controlled and uncontrolled methods to evaluate outcomes. What I will do in this paper is to informally review the literature on single session therapy that has been published since Bloom's 2001 paper. The paper is not intended as a formal review or meta-analysis of research data, partly because the field still does not have such methodological rigour.

This article describes walk-in single session counselling, a form of service delivery that enables clients to receive one session of counselling without the usual hurdles of intake and wait times. We distinguish between walk-in counselling and single session therapy by appointment. We describe a mindset for therapists that supports walk-in work. We also describe the workings of a walk-in session using a transcript, with commentary, of an actual session. Benefits and possible applications of the walk-in counselling concept are discussed.

This paper reports on three complementary research studies that set out to examine the incidence and nature of single sessions in hospital social work practice. The first study was a data-mining exercise that used statistics recorded by practitioners in nine public hospitals over a 12-month period to establish the extent of single session work, the clinical areas in which it occurred, and the types of issues it covered. This quantitative information was enhanced with the qualitative findings of the two subsequent studies: the first with hospital social workers; and the second with single-session clients. We concluded that single session work has not been sufficiently acknowledged in social work education and literature, and that it needs to become a more legitimate part of social work practice and training. At best, it represents social work at its highest level of skill, requiring expertise in quickly building rapport, assessment, and knowledge about sources of practical aid and information.

Setting up and implementing a single session family consultation in a specialist child and adolescent mental health setting, which for a long time has been an organisation and culture that has undertaken a traditional detailed child and family assessment and treatment, brings with it challenges. This paper will look at the history of single session consultation within the field of child and family services and, in particular, child and family services in mental health. It will also look at the development and implementation of a single session therapy program, and associated research on the effectiveness of the program, at the Alfred Child and Youth Mental Health Service. Clinical examples will assist in illustrating the program and its model and structures. Lastly, it will review the research data and compare this with other research data in the field.

In November 2009, the Bouverie Centre, a centre for training, research, and clinical family therapy in Melbourne, Australia, embarked on a 12-month trial involving the implementation of single session work as our main model of service provision for all new family appointments. We were interested in evaluating clients’ and therapists’ experiences of this change in our clinical service delivery. This article discusses some clinical dilemmas that arose for staff in this process, and how they were addressed. Clients’ responses to single session work are outlined, followed by a discussion of outcomes of the implementation for our organisation.

In recent decades, discussion about clinical practice has been dominated by a focus on evidence-based treatments, whilst the translation of evidence-based treatments into practice has been neglected or avoided. The single session therapy (SST) field reflects this general trend. As a result, the community has not benefited from available service improvements simply because they have not found their way into core practice or been translated across state-wide services. This article draws on a range of implementation projects managed by The Bouverie Centre, in particular a successful state-wide SST implementation project conducted in collaboration with Victorian community health counselling services, to raise implementation dilemmas and suggest practical ideas about the translation of SST ideas into mainstream clinical practice. It is hoped this discussion will be of interest to those wanting to translate any new idea into practice.