Functional Family Therapy: A Family Centered and Evidence Based Treatment Model for Use in Mental Health and Child Welfare

Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is one of the early models of family therapy models that helped establish family therapy as a mainstream treatment approach. FFT is a unique theoretical model in that it keeps it core while dynamically responding to the ever-evolving sets of ideas that grow based on knowledge from practice science. FFT illustrates how an “evidence-based” is also family centered. FFT leveraged technology to allow client voices to enter clinical decision making through measurement feedback approaches.

• Gain knowledge to show FFT’s ability to be both precise and “evidence-based” while at the same time being family centered.
• Describe how technology brings family voice into the center of clinical decision making.
• Explain how FFT can fit in mental health, juvenile justice, child welfare, and foster care settings.

Thomas L. Sexton, PhD, ABPP