Project Summary/Abstract:
Family therapy has emerged as one of the most efficacious interventions for child and adolescent behavioral
and psychiatric issues such a Conduct Disorder and Substance Use Disorders and for chronic health
conditions such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. However, widespread implementation of family therapy is often
hampered by high training costs, re-training needs following staff turnover, low agency readiness to support
new practices, and training strategies that lack ongoing implementation support or do so in ways that are
prohibitively expensive.
To address this need our company will utilize a web-based Family Therapy Training and Implementation
Platform (FTTIP). FTTIP’s innovation is that it: 1) is guided by the Simpson Program Change Model focusing
on organizational readiness to inform the readiness consultation and online supervisor and agency leader
coaching/consultation; 2) uses adaptive training and consultation processes that provide a dynamic and data-
driven procedure in which a competency is taught, measured, and the success or failure of the learning informs
the next step of training in real time; and 3) uses technology and an online platform that provides the
capabilities to fully benefit from an adaptive training and consultation process, a reverse classroom strategy
with more options for active learning, and long-distance work that reduces cost.
Phase I research objectives will focus on customization of the platform, user interface, and adaptation of
training and consultation content; on increasing the agency’s readiness for family therapy training and
implementation; showing significant improvement in counselor family therapy competencies; and documenting
feasibility and acceptability. The Phase I study will also include a small-scale Training as Usual (TAU)
comparison condition that will allow us to generate a preliminary estimate of effect size within each of the
conditions (FTTIP and TAU). These effect sizes can be used in the power analysis needed for the Phase II
study and will allow us to estimate delivery cost differences as well. The Phase I outcomes set the stage for a
fully-powered multisite Phase II Randomized Controlled Trial that can investigate whether FTTIP is superior to
“Traditional Face-to-Face Training” on all key domains, including trainee, supervisor, agency and client
outcomes. FTTIP will be attractive to healthcare delivery systems because it will be more effective than
traditional (face-to-face) training methods, better address the service providers’ readiness barriers that often
are not identified or addressed, and will provide ongoing consultation and counselor support during the difficult
implementation phase.
