This Bulletin was written by Michael S. Robbins, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, and José Szapocznik, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Center for Family Studies, Affiliation University of Miami School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

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From the Administrator Just as a child is influenced by his or her family, the child’s family, in turn, is affected by the culture of which it is an integral part. If we are to succeed in preventing and combating delinquency, we must work to strengthen the role of the family within the community in which it resides. This Bulletin features a family-strengthening strategy—brief strategic family therapy—that integrates theory with decades of research and practice at the University of Miami in an intensive, short-term, problem-focused intervention, generally lasting 3 months. The Bulletin also describes the therapy’s implementation by the Spanish Family Guidance Center. The Center, which was established by the University of Miami’s School of Medicine, serves the local Hispanic community, consisting largely of Cuban immigrants. In adapting brief strategic family therapy to the needs of its clients, the Center took into account the strengths and weaknesses these minority youth and families bring to therapy, and those special risk and protective factors are also highlighted in these pages. The needs of families are addressed most effectively within the social and cultural milieus of those families. Brief strategic family therapy is a time-tested approach to that end. John J. Wilson Acting Administrator