These programs are urgently needed, because research continues to confirm that many youths entering the juvenile justice system have serious, multiple problems in the areas of physical abuse, sexual victimization, alcohol and other drug use, mental health, and educational functioning. Many of these youths' difficulties can be traced to family alcohol or other drug use, mental health problems, or crime problems that began when the youth was young. One innovative approach is multisystemic therapy, developed at Dr. Henggeler and associates at the Family Services Research Center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Another innovative intervention is the Youth Support Project in Tampa, Florida; its Family Empowerment Intervention aims to improve family functioning by empowering parents based on a family systems approach. Issues still to be addressed are the need to develop effective and cost-efficient, community-based strategies and overcome barriers to involvement, the commitment of additional resources needed to strengthen service delivery infrastructures, and the lack of systematic knowledge about the responses of youth and families to these interventions over both the short and long terms. 90 references (Author abstract modified)