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The Family Project:
A Recent FFT Replication
The Family Project is a unique partnership
between a university (the University
of Nevada, Las Vegas) and a community
service provider (the Clark County Department
of Family and Youth Services
(DFYS)). The Family Project is currently
the largest FFT research and practice site
in the Nation. Through this partnership,
located in one of the Nation’s fastest
growing and most multiculturally and ethnically
diverse urban areas, FFT services
are provided to at-risk youth and their
families referred by juvenile probation. As
the data below reflect, the effectiveness
of this true community project results
from its use of marriage and family therapists
in an established community clinic.
During a 2-year period, clinic-based therapists
successfully contacted 231 families
referred to the Family Project by probation
officers. Because the Family Project
was the only counseling service used by
the juvenile court during that period, this
group represented the entire population
of adolescents referred for counseling services.
Of the group, 80 percent completed
FFT treatment services, a high rate of
completion compared with the rate for
standard juvenile justice-based interventions.
Thus, even though its services were
delivered in a university training center to
which clients had to travel for each session,
the Family Project successfully engaged
and retained a high percentage of a
diverse population of at-risk adolescents,
all of whom were on probation. This
success was a function of both the FFT
clinical model and the clinic’s extensive
outreach procedures.1
Figure 3 shows 1-year recidivism rates for
those who completed the Family Project’s
program and those who were part of a
treatment-as-usual comparison group (a
group that received probation services as
usual). The figure also provides the
districtwide 3-year recidivism rate and
the 3-year recidivism rate for those who
received other available court services.
Of those who completed the program,
only 19.8 percent committed an offense
during the year following completion,
compared with 36 percent of the
treatment-as-usual comparison group.
These data suggest that FFT reduced
recidivism by roughly 50 percent, a figure
consistent with previous FFT randomized
clinical trials and replication studies.
Another measure of outcome is a program’s
cost effectiveness. Figure 4 shows
the costs of various services within the
Clark County DFYS system during the
2-year study period. On average, FFT
treatment costs during this time were between
$700 and $1,000 per family. By contrast,
the average cost of detention was at
least $6,000 per adolescent and the average
cost of the county residential program
was at least $13,500 per adolescent. Considering
that the county’s residential
program has a 3-year recidivism rate of
more than 90 percent (i.e., 90 percent of
those who complete the program commit a
subsequent offense within 3 years), FFT is
highly cost effective—resulting in a much
lower rate of recidivism (19.8 percent for 1
year) at a much lower cost.
1 Initial sessions were accompanied by many phone contacts to enhance treatment participation.
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| Functional Family Therapy |
Juvenile
Justice Bulletin • December 2000 |
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