Quasi-experimental study of Functional Family Therapy effectiveness for juvenile justice aftercare in a racially and ethnically diverse community sample

• Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is a widely used treatment for youth problem behaviors.
• The bulk of evidence for FFT is based on predominantly White samples.
• We examined FFT effectiveness in a predominantly Latino and African American sample.
• Relative to matched comparisons, FFT youth had fewer out-of-home placements initially.
• By 36 months, youth across all groups had similar out-of-home placement rates.

Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is an intensive community-based treatment program designed to reduce youth behavior problems such as violence, drug use, and other delinquency. Although there is evidence of FFT efficacy and effectiveness with predominantly White samples, there is very little evidence with racial/ethnic minority samples. In light of the over-representation of African American and Latino youth in the juvenile justice system, this study examined the effectiveness of FFT and an adaptation of FFT to probation supervision, called Functional Family Probation (FFP), among a predominantly Latino and African American sample of youth returning home from court-ordered out-of-home placements (OHPs). Propensity score weighting was used to compare the likelihood of subsequent OHPs among youth receiving standard probation (Comparison group), and youth receiving FFT (with standard probation), youth receiving FFP (instead of standard probation), and youth receiving FFT in combination with FFP. Results indicated that youth receiving FFT (both with standard probation and FFP), relative to Comparison youth receiving standard probation only, had significantly lower likelihood of OHP during the first two months following release, but this advantage disappeared in later months. Youth receiving only FFP also had lower likelihood of OHP than Comparison youth in the first two months, though not significantly. These findings provide encouraging evidence of positive effects of FFT, in combination with FFP or standard probation, among a diverse sample of juvenile justice system-involved youth.