In attachment terms, the first aim of the intervention is to foster security. However, if a major deficit or stressor remains unaddressed in one functional domain (for instance the family), then in spite of good interventions in other domains (for instance the neurobiological and/or the individual psychodynamic) any sense of security will remain elusive. The systemic and attachment frameworks not only interact but do so inseparably.

For instance, the young person whose internal world is fragmenting cannot work if the family setting in which she is resident is equally rent by inter-personal conflict. Likewise, the family with firmly negative cognitions about the nature of external helping agencies (such as a school) is unlikely to provide the containment to facilitate a son or daughter to access the available help until the agency in question adjusts its stance to make it more accessible to the family and young person.

In the proposed multimodal approach the argument is that, rather than risking 'confusing' the young person and their family, mobilizing simultaneous interventions across multiple domains radically increases the chances of achieving good enough containment to prepare the way for further therapeutic tasks to be undertaken.

Within this framework, the young person and family will have the experience of a variety of different modes of conversation with these key figures, who nonetheless remain consistent as individuals through time. At times, communication will take a highly practical, problem-solving form (for instance in Crisis Contingency Planning), at other times it will be didactic or conversational (for instance in PsychoEducation, or in Cognitive Behavioural therapy), at other times it will take the form of FamilyWork, using circular questioning and other Mentalizing manoeuvres, and yet again at other times it will draw more on Psychodynamic theory, addressing the experience of the patient's inner world .