FWSN-advisorybd-repo.. - The Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance

achievement and reentry. The program is available in two major cities, New Haven and
Hartford, with an additional program set to open in Bridgeport in early 2008. The cost
of the program is approximately $185 per day, per child.
• Functional Family Therapy (FFT)
Functional Family Therapy, an intensive in-home service, was originally used by the
DCF regional offices and was recently expanded to be available for children in the
delinquent and FWSN populations on a limited case- by-case basis.
FFT provides in home and community-based clinical services to children and their
families. The clinical services include assessment and screening, family treatment,
consultation and referral to other services. FFT Programs provide access to child and
adolescent psychiatric services as well. While FFT is not a 24/7 emergency crisis
intervention program, each provider agency has available 24/7 emergency crisis response
capacity.
• Multi-systemic Therapy (MST)
Multi-systemic Therapy is a family-based treatment model that places considerable
attention on factors in the adolescent’s and family’s social networks that are linked with
antisocial behavior. Both DCF and CSSD provide this type of programming through
contracts with private providers. MST priorities include removing offenders from deviant
peer groups, enhancing school or vocational performance, and developing an indigenous
support network for the family to maintain therapeutic gains. MST programs have an
extremely strong commitment to removing barriers to service access (see e.g., the homebased
model of service delivery). MST services are more intensive than traditional family
therapies (e.g., several hours of treatment per week vs. 50 minutes). MST has welldocumented
long-term outcomes with adolescents presenting serious antisocial behavior
and their families. The strongest and most consistent support for the effectiveness of
MST comes from controlled studies that focused on violent and chronic juvenile
offenders.
• Brief Family Systemic Therapy (BFST)
Brief Family Systemic Therapy is a short-term, problem-focused intervention provided
by CSSD. The average treatment includes approximately 12–15 sessions and lasts about
3 months. For more severe cases, such as substance-abusing adolescents, the average
number of sessions and length of treatment may be doubled. It is important to note,
however, that BSFT is not a fixed “package.” Treatment continues until the family
achieves changes in key behavioral criteria rather than until it completes a predetermined
number of sessions.
• Intensive In-Home Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services (IICAPS)
Intensive In-home Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Service is a standardized treatment
model, developed at the Yale Child Study Center, for children with serious mental illness
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