Functional Family Therapy Clinical Training Man...

SUMMARY of DUTIES

The Functional Family Therapy Supervisor is responsible for all aspects of the FFT implementation including site certification and the development of FFT activities. This involves managing clinical schedules, engaging families, collecting, organizing, and interpreting data, and other responsibilities as determined. The individual will also be responsible for holding a certification in FFT clinical supervision and providing both direct and indirect services. Direct services include treatment and supervisory responsibilities as well as the overall management of the FFT component of the program. Indirect responsibilities include representing the program at meetings with other community agencies and other service providers. The goal is to provide strength-based, relational-focused family therapy in order to prevent out of home placement to at-risk youth. The supervisor is expected to know and follow the established policies and procedures of MHA of Westchester.

SPECIFIC DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Participation in meetings with community agencies and other service providers as needed.

2. Provision of direct clinical services which may include, but are not limited to, outreach, assessment and treatment planning, family therapy, crisis counseling and intervention, and community consultation and education.

3. Responsible for maintaining clinical records and following guidelines and regulations for documentation of services.

4. Provide supervision, mentoring, and coaching to all direct reports.

5. Complete evaluations of all direct reports.

6. Participate in all internal management meetings as designated and/or required by the grant.

7. Coordinate treatment with other community agencies and services.

8. Participate in program development and in training as required by grant.

9. Follow the established clinic policies and procedures.

10. Maintain appropriate professional standards.

11. Other designated or related duties.

Functional Family Therapy Clinical Training Man...

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FFT Partners was created to bring a renewed emphasis to clinical training, clinical specificity, provider friendly implementation, real life practice, and updated clinical training technology that values and engages our community partners.

Each clinical team must include one team member who attends externship. This intensive, hands on, training experience with actual clients includes supervision from behind the mirrored window. The Externship consists of three separate training experiences over a three month period at an off site location.

DUTIES: Improves client well-being and functioning by conducting proper clinical assessment, developing interventions that address the findings of assessments, providing psychoeducation to clients and families, and consultation and coordination with allied professionals. Participates in supervision, trainings, and professional development activities. Will provide additional clinical services consistent with CTS staff clinicians, as directed. Identifies client needs/problems from Functional Family Therapy assessments. Completes Needs Assessments and assessments of the FFT model. Uses DSM-V to make diagnostic formulations when required. Writes progress notes and other documents consistent with the FFT model. Ensures clients/families complete informed consents. Ensures that any releases of information have appropriate consents. Conducts in-person interventions with clients in accord with FFT. Manages crisis. Ensures that services related to clinical activities are coordinated. Ensures compliance with Agency policies and procedures regarding work practices and expectations. Explains rationale for intervention to families and other professionals. Uses knowledge of professional ethics to inform clinical services. Attends Agency and external trainings and participates in supervision.

FFT is a family intervention program for dysfunctional youth with disruptive, externalizing problems. FFT has been applied to a wide range of problem youth and their families in various multi-ethnic, multicultural contexts. Target populations range from at-risk pre-adolescents to youth with moderate to severe problems such as conduct disorder, violent acting-out, and substance abuse. While FFT targets youth aged 11-18, younger siblings of referred adolescents often become part of the intervention process. Intervention ranges from, on average, 12 to 14 one-hour sessions. The number of sessions may be as few as 8 sessions for mild cases and up to 30 sessions for more difficult situations. In most programs, sessions are spread over a three-month period. FFT has been conducted both in clinic settings as an outpatient therapy and as a home-based model.The FFT clinical model offers clear identification of specific phases which organizes the intervention in a coherent manner, thereby allowing clinicians to maintain focus in the context of considerable family and individual disruption. Each phase includes specific goals, assessment foci, specific techniques of intervention, and therapist skills necessary for success.

FFT, Inc. includes intensive procedures for monitoring quality of implementation on a continuous basis. Information is captured from multiple perspectives (family members, therapists, and clinical supervisors). The two measures that are utilized to represent therapist fidelity to the model are the Weekly Supervision Checklist and the Global Therapist Ratings.

Weekly Supervision Checklist: Following every clinical staffing, the clinical supervisor completes a fidelity rating for the case that was reviewed for each therapist. This fidelity rating reflects the degree of adherence and competence for that therapist's work in that case in a specific session. Thus, the weekly supervision ratings are not global, but specific to a single case presentation. Over the course of the year, a therapist may receive up to 50 ratings, which provides the supervisor with critical information about the therapist's progress in implementing FFT.

Global Therapist Ratings: Three times a year the clinical supervisor rates each therapist's overall adherence and competence in FFT. The Global Therapist Rating (GTR) allows for the supervisor to provide feedback to the therapist on their overall knowledge and performance of each phase and general FFT counseling skills. The GTR specifically targets time period measures with the hope of displaying therapist growth. With respect to the GTR, we encourage supervisors to utilize the comments box under each phase to target specific strengths and specific phase areas of growth.

Summary:(To include basic study design, measures, results, and notable limitations)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a short-term family intervention program [now called Functional Family Therapy (FFT)], effectively reduced maladaptive behavior patterns in adolescents. Two treatment conditions and two control groups were used. Measures utilized include four interaction measures to assess activity levels (silence, frequency, and duration of simultaneous speech), as well as verbal reciprocity (equality of speech), accuracy of perception (behavior specificity phase), accuracy of perception (vignette phase), and interaction phase. Results indicate that treatment produced significant changes in the family interaction patterns with treatment families becoming less silent, talking more equally, and experiencing an increase in both the frequency and duration of simultaneous speech. Control families did not improve on any of the four interaction measures and the pencil-and-paper treatment components yielded no significant change among all groups. Limitations include unreliability with the paper-and-pencil components, a lack of comparison of individual therapy to the family systems approach, small sample size, and lack of follow-up.

Summary:(To include basic study design, measures, results, and notable limitations)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a family therapy group method (now called Functional Family Therapy (FFT)). Participants were randomly assigned to the family therapy group method or parent group method. Measures utilized include the Client Interview Form, the Parent Interview Form, and the Drug Severity Index. Results indicate at follow-up evaluation, the clients and their mothers in both groups reported significant improvement on numerous outcome criteria, including reduction in substance use. There was no significant difference between the two groups in degree of improvement. Limitations include reliance on self-report of drug use, and generalizability due to ethnicity.

Summary:(To include basic study design, measures, results, and notable limitations)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate individual cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), family therapy, combined individual and family therapy, and a group intervention for substance-abusing adolescents. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: Functional Family Therapy (FFT), individual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a combination of FFT and CBT (joint), or a psychoeducational group. Measures utilized include the Timeline Follow-Back (TLFB) interview, collateral reports from parents and siblings of adolescents, urinalyses, the Problem Oriented Screening Instrument for Teenagers (POSIT), and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Results indicate adolescents in both of the family therapy conditions (FFT and joint CBT/FFT) had significant reductions in heavy marijuana use from pretreatment to the 4-month assessment, and this reduction persisted until the 7-month assessment. The initial changes in those in the CBT condition from pretreatment to 4 months, however, did not persist through the 7-month assessment. All the interventions in this study demonstrated some degree of treatment efficacy. Limitations include an unequal number of sessions across treatments, length of follow up, and the self-report nature of substance use.

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