Multisystemic Therapy helps shut down safe-houses in the UK 

In an Inner London borough on a hot summer’s day, unusual for the U.K. (remember, we are obsessed with the weather this side of the pond), the MST team was supporting a family in search of their 13-year-old daughter, who was out past curfew, putting herself at risk. This was time for us to help this family learn to increase monitoring and supervision as well as help their daughter get involved in pro-social activities.

Our MST therapists have learned over time that we must show families how to do higher-level interventions needed to extract their teens from criminal peers. These interventions sometimes include locating and poisoning “safe houses” and posting pictures of the young person in the community to alert others that this teen is vulnerable and the family needs their support. (“Safe houses” are homes or places where a teen thinks she or he can go and are “safe” because parents and other adults don’t know where they are, and even if they did, the adults wouldn’t dare go looking for them there.) These MST interventions are performed with care to ensure the safety of this high-risk population. Here are two of our favorite success stories, demonstrating this is always done with hope, humor, and sticking to the MST Analytic Process and Principles.