The Model

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Team Integrated Solution Focused Therapy (TISFT) program is an innovative, strengths based approach to working with youth placed in treatment by the legal system, their families and communities. The TISFT model was developed in collaboration with a team of licensed professional counselors and licensed marriage and family therapists who believed that when the entire “system” of a youth is involved in treatment and in re-entry to the youth’s family and community, that the youth stands a better chance of being successful. The program utilizes a solution focused approach that focuses on the strengths of the family, constructing a preferred future and assisting the family in developing a new structure so that old behaviors cannot exist. 

The systemic underpinnings of the TISFT approach also provides a better chance that the youth will have a much better chance of re-entry into the family and community, behaving and reacting differently.  Traditional approaches have chosen to work individually with the youth, who is sent to placement yet has neglected to include the communities of interest (COI) of the youth: family, school and legal/neighborhood communities. While placement provides a reprieve for both youth and family, once returning from traditional placement without COI support, behaviors often return when the system has not opted for different interactions and responses.

The program developers of TISFT recognized the importance of involving the COI of the youth and created the program to be inclusive of all COI. To accomplish this systemic change, the TISFT is composed of four unique phases that structurally provide a direction for both youth and family to undergo changes that will improve interactions with the COI, and maintain expectations for youth compliance and success. As a result, the success rates of youth returning from placement and re-entering their COI with the interventions of the TISFT has proven higher than for traditional models. 

The TISFT team works side by side with the family, community (probation officers and judges) and the school (administration and teachers)  through face to face conversations so that the youth returns to a new system that sees the youth through a new lens. By becoming aware of the youth’s strengths and the COI strengths, the system is primed to interact differently to maintain the family’s and youth’s goals that are created during the therapeutic process.