Reframing is the technique by which the KeyWorker changes the conceptual and emotional setting in which a situation is experienced and places it in another frame which fits the 'facts' of the same situation equally well, if not better, and thereby changes its entire meaning and thus potentially the behaviours of the participants.

One of the keyworker's intentions, when reframing, is to change from a frame that is implicitly unalterable, to a frame that is implicitly flexible and open to change. Changing the frame of reference against which a given event is perceived, also changes how it is judged. With the attribution of meaning comes a value judgement - the assigning of a given value in accordance with a variety of different "scales", such as healthy-sick, sane-mad, physical-psychological, personal-interpersonal, good-bad etc. Such judgements have a tendency to pin down individuals and families to fixed roles, resulting in specific patterns of interaction. Relabelling a psychotic young person’s seeming withdrawal in the home as "autonomy", or - in other circumstances - as a "way of producing closeness in the family that would otherwise not exist" can have dramatic effects on family interaction.
In practice, reframing interventions may take the following form:

• Describing observations regarding the family's interactions and communication patterns, with special reference to quantity, quality and direction of communication; affective tone; boundaries, coalitions and alliances. Such a description is, strictly speaking, not a "re-frame", but an initial "frame" in that it deliberately singles out and names a specific interactional sequence which may then, at a later stage, be referred to when re-framing it.

Example: "I notice that you don't look at one another when you talk to each other. Is that helpful?"

• Outlining identifiable (positive) 'functions' of the symptom (i.e. protection of aspects of the family organization from the change due to family life cycle development and other crises of loss or addition)

Example: "Some people have elaborate explanations, others take breaks or holidays, and others get depressed"

• Putting forwards thoughts about what might be the 'risk' to the family of losing the symptoms (i.e. fear of break-up of marriage, pain at the loss of special closeness, dread of taking responsibility for current situation or past disasters). This is based on the assumption that people make the best choices they can, given the constraints of their situation; this means that a known distress may seem preferable to a feared consequence of change.

Example: "Perhaps you are afraid to improve too quickly because your partner could say to you: if you can do X now, how about doing Y and Z etc as well...he could suddenly make too many demands on you"

Some reframing may attend to the developing relationship between the family and the keyworker, and the implications of change for that relationship (including the cessation of therapy).