Functional Family Therapy (FFT) from FFT LLC is an evidence-based, family-focused intervention for youth facing elevated risk factors and their families. Functional Family Therapy (FFT) has proven effective not only with families, but also in community engagement. This article shares how FFT principles helped build trust, strengthen relationships, and improve outcomes in a high-need neighborhood.
My journey with Functional Family Therapy (FFT) began in Syracuse, New York—a mid-sized city with big-city struggles. Syracuse ranks high in community safety concerns and economic stressors and faces many of the same longstanding service and resource gaps seen in urban communities across the country. These challenges don’t exist in isolation; they shape the daily realities of children, caregivers, neighborhoods, and the service systems that respond to them. Entering the field, I quickly learned that FFT would become much more than a clinical intervention. It would become a roadmap for understanding communities, building trust, and restoring relationships where prior system interactions had strained trust.
My introduction to FFT was not the traditional path. Many FFT clinicians complete training and join a team in which everyone shares similar caseloads, collaborates closely, and gradually builds experience with the model. My path diverged almost immediately. As soon as I completed training, I was assigned to be the only FFT therapist on the Syracuse “Save Our Youth” gang task force—a specialized program serving youth living in a specific zip code, all of whom had been referred through a multi-agency partnership due to elevated justice-system involvement.
For some, this assignment might have sounded like a heavy lift. For me, it felt personal. I grew up in the same zip code the task force served. I knew the community well, and had longstanding relationships throughout that brought both credibility and humility. I understood how neighborhoods can be labeled “high-need” while simultaneously being rich with culture, resilience, and community connection. In many ways, I felt I had a head start.
Still, I knew that familiarity and good intentions were not enough. This was a community that had been subject to high levels of system involvement and inconsistent access to supportive services for circumstances rooted in economic hardship and limited access to opportunity. Service providers— representing external systems unfamiliar with the community’s lived experience —came and went, leaving mixed legacies. Some helped; many did not. For these reasons, the community had every right to be cautious of me.
What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that FFT would give me the structure I needed not only to support families, but to become a trusted member of the community. The same principles that guide FFT clinicians in engaging families apply remarkably well to engaging neighborhoods. In fact, FFT became the “cheat code” for building relationships with a community that had every reason not to trust another therapist knocking on their door.
In FFT, the Engagement phase is not a warm-up to therapy—it is the first intervention. Therapists are taught to be relentless, consistent, and credible. We are taught to show up when we say we will, to listen without judgment, to understand the family’s perspective, and to identify the key players who influence family functioning.
I realized early on that if I mapped the community the same way I mapped a family’s relational system, I could build the network of support I needed to be effective.
In FFT-informed community engagement, mapping key stakeholders is essential. For me, these included:
Once I identified the community network, I made an intervention plan.
I called them. I visited their businesses. I chatted with them between appointments. I walked the neighborhood regularly. I let myself be seen—not as a therapist passing through, but as someone genuinely invested in the community’s wellbeing.
Over time, people began recognizing me. They’d wave from porches, stop me to talk, or check in about what was happening around the neighborhood. I learned that visibility becomes credibility, and credibility opens doors—both literally and figuratively.
Families who had refused multiple providers before me began letting me in. Some welcomed me because a neighbor vouched for me. Some because local youth told them I was “good people.” Some because they had seen me enough times to feel comfortable.
The first task of FFT—engagement—worked exactly the same at the community level.
With the door open, I turned to the next FFT phase: Motivation. The goals in this phase—balanced alliance, increased relational focus, increased hope, and reduced negativity and blame—translate beautifully to community work.
Families engage when they feel heard, understood, and respected. Communities are no different. I made it a priority to understand the perspectives of clergy, outreach workers, educators, and other system partners. The more I knew about the community’s struggles, triumphs, and internal dynamics, the more effectively I could build trust. Understanding prevented me from making assumptions—a critical step in building true alliance.
FFT teaches that problems are rarely the fault of any one person. Instead, they come from patterns. With the community, I worked to shift conversations from individual blame (“this kid is the problem”) to collective responsibility (“we all shape what happens here”). I acknowledged my role, the role of systems, and the role of broader forces like resource availability and access to supports. This reframing made space for collaboration instead of judgment.
Hope is the heartbeat of the Motivation phase. In a neighborhood accustomed to outside criticism, hope meant showing up not just for crises, but for celebrations.
I went to backpack drives. I helped with cookouts. I dropped off donations. I supported local events. I highlighted the strengths of the community every chance I got.
Showing up consistently in positive spaces—not just in moments of family or community crisis—allowed me to be seen as a partner rather than another therapist arriving only when something went wrong. It also helped underserved families see themselves as capable, resilient, and worthy of the positive attention too often reserved for others.
This phase task required intention. Negativity and blame often came from system partners, unfamiliar with the community context, or from peer groups experiencing conflict. I worked with outreach teams to support conflict mediation and violence prevention, referred youth to mediation, and stepped in when conversations unfairly criticized the community. I didn’t silence hard truths, but I redirected language that created hopelessness or reinforced stereotypes.
By managing negativity and blame, I wasn’t “protecting” the community—I was honoring its dignity.
As engagement and motivation deepened, something fundamental shifted—not only in the way the community saw me, but in the way I saw myself in the work. The more I applied FFT at the community level, the more I found myself deeply connected to the neighborhood. I fell in love with the people, the culture, the resilience, and the relationships.
In return, the community began to trust me in ways that many other therapy and community providers never experienced. People vouched for me. They told families that I was different, that I cared, that I showed up. Those endorsements mattered far more than any credential I carried.
Referrals that had historically been impossible to open started accepting services. Youth who avoided providers met with me because their friends encouraged them to. Community members actively helped me engage families.
By working the FFT model faithfully—with families and the community—I earned something that cannot be trained or forced: genuine belonging.
And I learned something essential:
FFT isn’t just a model for healing families. It’s a model for healing communities.
It teaches consistency, humility, relationship-building, and shared purpose. It shows providers how to show up in ways that rebuild trust where trust with institutions has been strained. And when applied beyond the living room, FFT strengthens not only individual households but the neighborhoods that shape them.
Written by an experienced FFT practitioner serving high-risk youth in Syracuse, NY
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