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“This is a remarkable volume that speaks to new ways to deliver services to hard-to-reach youth and families. The authors' innovative community-based approach to prevention and treatment has sound theoretical and empirical support, which will encourage practitioners to adopt it. Students who want to become true catalysts of change will find the stories and examples refreshing and invigorating.”

—Leonard A. Jason, PhD, Department of Psychology, DePaul University


“Sure to become a classic, this landmark book offers readable, comprehensive guidelines for dealing with the complex problems of youth at risk and their families. The book highlights key dimensions—from school to health care to employment and life cycle stresses—demonstrating the pernicious impact of racism and societal scapegoating and offering helpful suggestions for intervention. Both authors bring long experience to this difficult subject, addressing issues of drugs and alcohol, domestic violence, teen pregnancy, gang involvement, and child abuse. Every therapy student should have this book as a key reference. It makes dramatically clear the value of coordinating therapy and developing coalitions with school professionals, health care providers, and agency personnel.”

—Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD (h.c.), Director, Multicultural Family Institute, Highland Park, New Jersey


“Boyd-Franklin and Bry have produced a book that could not be more timely and relevant to mental health professionals in community and educational settings. Scholarly and practical, this work will have an impact on treatment of adolescents for decades to come. Among the book's outstanding features are considerations of cultural, racial, and socioeconomic factors and multigenerational issues in clinical practice. Evidence-based treatment needs to be moved into a multisystems framework; the authors accomplish this critical goal by offering relevant insights and blueprints. The book also offers cogent agendas for mental health training and supervision and includes powerful case examples. I strongly recommend this important contribution to seasoned practitioners as well as students preparing for a career in mental health services.”

—Thomas R. Kratochwill, PhD, School Psychology Program (Emeritus), University of Wisconsin–Madison


“Essential reading for anyone working with at-risk adolescents and their families. This book describes the experiences of at-risk youth and their families—and of the professionals seeking to join and collaborate with them—in a way that is clinically rich, empirically supported, hopeful, and immensely helpful. Boyd-Franklin and Bry translate theory and research into 'real-world' practice, offering concrete, practical instructions and specific interventions. Their integration of family and developmental theory into a strengths-focused, collaborative, multisystems approach brings an updated framework to the field. The book's description of what is needed for successful intervention with at-risk young people and their families certainly mirrors my 20+ years of clinical experience with this population. It is an effective, highly readable training text for the next generation of clinicians. I plan to use this book as a core text in my graduate-level family counseling courses.”

—Penny Haney, PhD, Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Lynch School of Education, Boston College


“This text gives the graduate student or practitioner greater knowledge and skills to work with at-risk youth and their families. It provides a framework for understanding the multigenerational patterns and crises associated with teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, juvenile delinquency, physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and gang involvement. Covering home-based family therapy as well as interventions in other systems, the text describes multiple strategies for supporting these clients.”

—Julie Anne Laser-Maira, PhD, MSW, LCSW, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Overview of the Book

I. At-Risk Adolescents and Their Families

2. At-Risk Adolescents and Their Families

3. Cultural, Racial, and Socioeconomic Issues

4. Working with Kinship Care Families

5. Multigenerational Patterns in Families of At-Risk Adolescents

II. The Multisystems Model and Home-Based Family Therapy

6. The Multisystems Model and Home-Based Family Therapy

7. Multisystemic Therapy (MST)

8. Multisystems Model Case Example

9. Supervision and Training for Home-Based Family Therapists

III. Achievement Mentoring: An Evidence-Based, School-Based Intervention

10. School Engagement, Disengagement, Dropout, and a Learning Theory Approach, Patricia Simon

11. Achievement Mentoring Program

12. Communication Skills for Achievement Mentoring

13. Achievement Mentoring: A Case Example

14. Achievement Mentoring Implementation in Schools, with Mina Yadegar

IV. Research

15. Relevant Research for Home-Based Family Therapists and Achievement Mentors

Author Index

Subject Index

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About the Authors

Nancy Boyd-Franklin, PhD, is an African American clinical psychologist and family therapist and is a Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her outstanding contributions have been recognized with awards from many professional organizations, including the American Family Therapy Academy, the Association of Black Psychologists, the American Psychological Association (Divisions 45 and 43), the Association of Black Social Workers, and the American Psychiatric Association, and she has received an honorary doctorate from the Phillips Graduate Institute. Dr. Boyd-Franklin is the author or coauthor of numerous articles and books, including Adolescents at Risk: Home-Based Family Therapy and School-Based Intervention; Black Families in Therapy, Second Edition: Understanding the African American Experience; and Therapy in the Real World: Effective Treatments for Challenging Problems.

• All titles by Nancy Boyd-Franklin

Brenna Hafer Bry, PhD, is Professor Emerita in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where she served as Department Chair and Director of Clinical Training. Her research has focused on risk factors that predict adolescent conduct problems. She discovered that the probability of youths’ future problems increases as their number of risk factors increases, and that their probability of future problems can be reduced by reducing their number of risk factors. She subsequently developed and evaluated the Achievement Mentoring Program, a school-based intervention that reduces numbers of risk factors, which she is currently disseminating. Dr. Bry is a recipient of the Prevention Science Award from the Prevention Research Society.

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Contributors

Patricia Simon, PhD, is Associate Research Scientist in the Division of Prevention and Community Research, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine.

Mina Yadegar, PsyD, is a Postdoctoral Psychology Fellow at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine.

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Audience

Clinical psychologists; family therapists; clinical social workers; mental health counselors; school psychologists, counselors, and social workers; and psychiatric nurses; as well as graduate students in these fields.

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Course Use

May serve as a text in graduate-level courses.