Conclusion
In the evolution of BSFT, the Center for Family Studies has sought to integrate theory, application, and research. The Center's work began in the 1970's to address an issue of growing concern: promoting culturally competent therapists and therapies to address behavior and drug abuse problems among Miami's Hispanic youth. Since then, the Center has achieved important breakthroughs in assessment, engagement, treatment, and prevention, which have provided a solid foundation from which to pursue new advances in the field. Refinement of structural family theory strategies and goals in BSFT, in turn, enabled the Center to modify these strategies to achieve the same goals without having the entire family in therapy, thus making one-person family therapy possible. Changing family interactions by working primarily with one person led to a breakthrough in engaging hard-to-reach families in treatment.
The work of the Center for Family Studies will help therapists
develop new strategies to support minority families. As the needs of families
change, work in the field needs to continue to evolve to address the multiple
problems minority families will continue to confront. The Center operates
under the assumption that “it takes a village to raise a child.”
It is necessary both to create a “village,” or community, that
can support healthy child development and to modify policies and systems
that provide services to the community. Bronfenbrenner (1979) wrote, “Seldom
is attention paid to the person's behavior in more than one setting or
to the way in which relations between settings can affect what happens
within them” (p. 18). He suggested that an individual's environment
is composed of a complex set of nested structures. Scientists involved
in intervention must consider the social and cultural context in which
treated families live. The Center for Family Studies' development of theory,
research, and services within the complex community is based on this priority.
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