Psychologist finds great alternative for youth with Multisystemic Therapy

As a young clinical psychologist, fresh out of graduate school working for a private community mental-health agency, I was referred to a 16-year-old white male for an “evaluation and assessment.”  The evaluation and assessment is common task in the child-serving system. Though it has different names, different funding streams and can be performed at a myriad of points in the process, it is always done for the same basic reason: to receive an expert’s opinion on what next steps should be taken in a child’s care. For the young man before me, it wasn’t quite clear what that step should be.

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.

Finding the Right FIT for Mum and Son With Multisystemic Therapy

MST clinicians often get asked how we affect change in families who are mandated to services or families who have not had success in other services. The answer is pretty straightforward, in MST, we maintain a constant focus on engagement and alignment, we meet people where they are and leverage their strengths for change.

This case began deceptively well. The family had bought into meeting with the therapist and changing the son’s behavior. Then a barrier was hit. The mother wasn’t buying MST’s focus on working with and treating the entire family.

An MST therapist weighs in on treating trauma

As practitioners of Multisystemic Therapy, we are often asked if MST can be helpful for youth who have experienced trauma. While MST is not a treatment model designed to provide trauma-focused care, the short answer is—yes. 

MST's analytic process gives hope to families with troubled adolescents.

Families with adolescents who have committed crimes are often at the end of their tether and have lost all hope. The first question to their MST therapist often is “what could you possibly do that we haven’t tried?” Then they say, “And believe me, we’ve tried everything, and nothing works.” What they quickly come to learn is that MST's approach to working with families is different from anything they've tried in the past.

That's because MST is rooted in understanding the family's unique circumstances and their strengths. The therapist uses the MST Analytic Process, what we call the Do Loop to create change by slowing down to first seek understanding and then speeding up by acting and doing.

A comprehensive report on juvenile crime, victimization, and the juvenile justice system

To say the National Center for Juvenile Justice’s (NCJJ) 2014 Juvenile Offenders and Victims report is comprehensive is not doing it justice.

The center used a vast array of sources from Census Bureau to the FBI to state agencies with the objective of giving the public, media, elected officials, and juvenile-justice professionals accurate statistics on the types of crime juveniles are committing, who’s committing the crimes, and trends in criminal behaviors.

The Cost of Jailing Juveniles—Enough to Give You Sticker Shock 

The Justice Policy Institute recently issued a report spelling out the staggering costs of incarcerating juveniles. The institute, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to finding ways to improve the justice system and reduce the number of people imprisoned, gathered information from 46 states on what they spend on their juvenile correctional facilities. These states accounted for 93 percent of the U.S. population in 2013.

Texas Juvenile Crime Justice Reform Reduces Crime & Saves Money

In 2007, after abuses were reported in Texas juvenile facilities, the legislature put together a reform package. Part of its aim was to keep youthful offenders close to home in the hopes of reducing the size of the correctional system, the second largest in the United States. Money that would have been spent putting kids behind bars, building new jails and prisons, and all the ancillary costs of incarceration were to be funneled into community supervision.

Over the course of the years since the reforms began, juvenile incarcerations plunged from 4,305 to 1,481, a 66-percent drop. At the same time, arrests fell by 33 percent from 136,206 in 2007 to 91,873 in 2012. So, it would not appear that locking up fewer adolescents was a threat to public safety.

By closing eight juvenile correctional facilities, the state shaved its appropriations from $486 million to $290 million from 2006-2007 to 2014-2015. The savings went to local probation departments that find community supervision, services, and treatment for the offenders.

Imagine yourself 17. You’ve been convicted of armed robbery. In jail, you were caught with a shiv. In the eyes of the institution, no excuse for that. However, any viewer of the TV series “Law and Order” would know having protection might be the only way to stave off predators.

Now take this further. Imagine you are confined to an 8-by-10 foot cell, 23 hours a day without human contact. That’s what happened to Michael Kemp. “You just like, ‘Man, I feel like an animal in here. I don’t even feel real...where I’m not even a human being."

Pew Poll Finds Voters  Support Juvenile Sentencing Reform For Those Who Commit Lesser Crimes

In the 1990s, the country and its lawmakers took a “get tough on juvenile offenders” stance. Keeping the community safe by getting delinquents off the street and locking them up was the attitude. 

Judging by a 2014 Pew Charitable Trusts poll, the times, have changed.