Functional Family Therapy for Gang Populations (FFT-G): Overview

Gang membership facilitates increased involvement in violence and serious delinquency. It is therefore important to identify effective programs to reduce the level of gang membership and the impact of gang membership on antisocial behaviors. Few gang-specific prevention and intervention programs have been demonstrated in rigorous research to be effective for reducing violence, delinquency, and drug use. However, several non-gang-specific programs (e.g., those identified by the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development project) have been shown in rigorous research to reduce these problems.

 Researchers at the University of Maryland and Temple University are partnering with the Philadelphia Family Court to implement and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of a “gang-enhanced” version of Functional Family Therapy (FFT), a Blueprint model program often used by juvenile court systems. The study tests the extent to which the modified program, FFT-G, reduces gang membership and delinquency among high risk youth, many of whom are active gang members or at-risk for gang involvement. Importantly, the study also demonstrates the use of an existing public funding stream -- Medical Assistance (MA, Medicaid) – for reducing problem behaviors in a high-risk population. The study will document how this mechanism is used in Philadelphia to fund direct services that are evidence-based.

This presentation provides an overview of the project rationale, history, and design of the randomized controlled trial implemented in partnership with the Philadelphia Family Courts. The subjects are court-involved males aged 11-17 who are either current gang members or are at risk for joining gangs. Subjects entered the study when they attended a court hearing with the participating judge and agreed to participate in the study. One hundred twenty-nine (129) families were then randomly assigned to receive the gang-enhanced FFT intervention using the existing public funding stream or treatment as usual. This presentation describes the characteristics of the youths and parent/guardians assigned to the treatment and control groups. Data come from pre-test interviews conducted with every youth and caregiver prior to random assignment and from court records describing the criminal history of each youth participant.