Youths in the Juvenile Justice System

Youths in the Juvenile Justice System

What Works

• Multisystemic Therapy (MST)
• Integrative, family-based treatment with a focus on improving psychosocial functioning for youth and families.
• Functional Family Therapy (FFT)
• Family-based program that focuses on delinquency, treating maladaptive and acting out behaviors, and identifying obtainable changes.
• Multidimensional Treatment Foster
• As an alternative to corrections, MTFC places juvenile offenders Care (MTFC) who require residential treatment with carefully trained foster families who provide youth with close supervision, fair and consistent limits, consequences and a supportive relationship with an adult.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• Structured, therapeutic approach that involves teaching youth (CBT) about the thought-behavior link and working with them to modify their thinking patterns in a way that will lead to more adaptive behavior in challenging situations.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy
• Therapeutic approach that includes individual and group therapy components and specifically aims to increase self-esteem and decrease self-injurious behaviors and behaviors that interfere with therapy.

 

What Seems to Work

• Family Centered Treatment (FCT)
• FCT seeks to address the causes of parental system breakdown while integrating behavioral change. FCT provides intensive in home services and is structured into four phases: joining and assessment; restructuring; value change; and generalization.
• Brief Strategic Family Therapy
• A short-term, family-focused therapy that focuses on changing family interactions and contextual factors that lead to behavior problems in youth.
• Aggression Replacement Therapy
• A short-term, educational program that focuses on anger management and provides youth with the skills to demonstrate non-aggressive behaviors,
• (ART) decrease antisocial behaviors, and use prosocial behaviors.