Bright Idea: Functional Family Therapy Helps Young People and Their Kin to Cope and Change

In his work with troubled youth, Functional Family Therapy co-founder James Alexander found that his

 efforts that didn’t include a child’s family often weren’t successful. And work with parents that didn’t include the child met the same fate.

So Alexander developed Functional Family Therapy, or FFT, to help the individual by including the entire family. More than 40 years later, organizations around the world are using the therapy. One such group is The New York Foundling, a nonprofit that offers an array of services to address 6,000 children and families in crisis in New York and Puerto Rico.

“The two key things that stood out to us about the FFT model were the capacity to engage with families and the capacity to fundamentally change the conversation taking place in the home,” says Bill Baccaglini, president and CEO of The New York Foundling.

http://ncfy.acf.hhs.gov/news/2014/03/bright-idea-functional-family-therapy-helps-young-people-and-their-kin-cope-and-change