Suspending and expelling students from school and taking them through the juvenile and criminal justice system for minor infractions has created the school-to-prison pipeline. According to a U.S. Department of Justice complaint, officials in some schools give armed police the authority to stop, question, search, frisk, detain, and arrest students both on and off the school grounds.

It’s hard to imagine that in a country like America there are children who suffer from the stress of not having enough to eat, a place to rest their heads at night, or how they will get to school. Even with all the programs developed by the federal government, poverty still takes a toll on a child’s quality of life. 

Recurrence of child abuse happens to young children, but there is a higher risk for recurring abuse and neglect for those children if they have special needs.

An estimated 3 of every 4 victims of sex trafficking are girls or women. In the case of young female victims, they often share similar characteristics: they are homeless or runaways, victims of previous abuse, and often involved in the juvenile justice system.

Summer is ending, and school is back in session. Cue the advertisements of back-to-school sales on supplies and clothes, “Meet the Teacher” nights, and those timeless first day of school pictures. As many children and families are filling their new backpacks with loads of supplies for their first day, many families do not have the means to even send their children to school with new pencils.

How MST Came to Connecticut 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the state of Connecticut was grappling with a challenge that is quite familiar for state officials: many of their youth programs were not effective. In 2004, a report found that Connecticut’s services provided were often making youth worse off than they were prior to treatment. As a result, the Court Support Services Division (CSSD) began investigating alternative programs.

This year's MST Advanced Supervisors Workshop is just around the corner! The 2-day training event will take place in Charleston, South Carolina on September 20-21. Read on to see why you don't want to miss it, and if you haven't yet registered, you can do so here. 

Although juvenile arrest rates nationwide are on the decline, that fact can be deceiving: in many communities, violent offenses are on the rise.

How MST Came to Louisiana

Louisiana was an early adopter of Multisystemic Therapy (MST). The initial wave of research on the treatment model caught the eye of researchers in the state, who were impressed with the outcomes reported and advocated for the state to adopt the model. In 1995, the first MST team was funded through a criminal justice grant, and over the years the model grew steadily, thanks largely to strong support for MST in Louisiana from the court system.

With Multisystemic Therapy (MST), families have access to their clinical team 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that even if a family’s therapist is out during a certain time, they will have access to another clinician at a moment’s notice. The following testimonial was written by a mother in New Zealand whose two children were positively impacted by the use of Multisystemic Therapy. You'll notice that while Seb, their first MST therapist, set up a positive foundation, Barbara, the covering therapist, was able to step right in to continue working with the family without missing a beat in terms of clinical intensity. That's the benefit of a team approach, and why part of the MST process involves group supervision and group consultation. When we provide clinical supervision and consultation in a team environment, each member can step in to support a family when the primary therapist is unavailable.