Confusion exists about what psychosocial interventions are and what they are not, about whether they achieve their goals, whether they do harm rather than good and about what principles should guide good practice of agencies. There have been many debates about these and other issues amongst practitioners in the field as well amongst academics who are involved in developing and evaluating psychosocial interventions. The confusion has been increased through the existence of countless projects and interventions that describe themselves as doing psychosocial work, yet have little in common with one another. The absence of a common framework that agencies can refer to when they want to initiate psychosocial interventions has meant that agencies often find themselves alone in their decision-making. In order to gain clarity on some of these questions and to help agencies who want to work in the field the Psychosocial Working Group (PWG) was formed in 2000. The group has set about the task of developing a common framework that summarises key knowledge in the field and provides agencies with some ‘tools’ for making decisions about the type of interventions they can implement. This document is a short account of the framework that the PWG is proposing.