| MTFC is a treatment model developed to re-create the powerful socializing influence of functional family life for adjudicated youth who have been placed by the courts into out-of-home care because of community safety concerns. Foster parents are trained to couple positive relational activities with the of use non-violent discipline and supervision strategies. The foster parents and youth are surrounded with 24-hour access to professionals who provide support, problem solving, and help designing therapeutic interventions. Outcomes of a 5-year longitudinal randomized intervention study will be presented. Follow-up data from this study suggest that compared to a treatment as usual control group MTFC had positive impact on official and self-reported criminality beyond other well-known predictors of chronic juvenile offending such as age at 1 st arrest, number of previous offenses, age at referral. In addition, hypothesized mediators were also shown to co-vary with youth outcomes in ways predicted. Results of this study suggest that developmentally appropriate, intensive, and individualized family focused treatment is both feasible and superior to treatment as usual (i.e., group care) at any point in the developmental trajectory of antisocial youngsters. |
Updated 05/20/2006