Prosocial Family Therapy for Juvenile Offenders: A Guide for Practitioners

Prosocial Family Therapy (PFT), developed by Elaine Blechman and her colleagues through more than 25 years of work with families requiring immediate help, addresses the needs of troubled, vulnerable adolescents who are at high risk for diverse bad life outcomes because of their reliance on maladaptive coping strategies. In this comprehensive introduction to PFT, the authors show how to engage, motivate, and support these high-risk youth and their multiproblem families in the effort to promote resilience and buffer risk factors.

They review the extensive literature on risk protection factors and construct a theoretical model of prosocial coping. In a clear, accessible language they describe the PFT session, which includes tasks that ritualize aspects of procosial coping, explain methods of longitudinal assessment, and demonstrate the use of client data to optimize the process and outcome of intervention, and the development of a plan for the generalization and maintenance of change. They consider:

* youths’ community problems such as police arrest,

* youths’ home problems such as sibling fights,

* youths’ personal problems such as depression, and

* parents’ needs and crises.

Prosocial Family Therapy For Juvenile Offenders, which includes useful diagrams, forms, and checklists, fills a major void. Outlining the first tested and practical approach to helping an extremely difficult client population, it will be welcomed by a wide audience of mental health and juvenile justice professionals, their trainees, and students.