Overview

Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is an evidence-based family counseling program for young people who have been referred by the juvenile justice system, mental health providers, schools, or child welfare systems (the systems that respond in cases of alleged child abuse and neglect). This project examines how to better assess whether FFT is being delivered as its model intends, a process known as fidelity assessment. MDRC’s Center for Data Insights is working with FFT Partners to develop and test a tool that uses artificial intelligence to review the information FFT already collects—session‑level notes, treatment plans, factors staff members use to make decisions, and family responses to questions about their experiences—to assess fidelity quickly and on a large scale. The project team will collaborate with FFT therapists, supervisors, and leaders to design how these processes will fit into their daily work, create and test fidelity measures that AI will guide but people will review, and build real‑time data displays help guide supervision and treatment planning. Although this project focuses on FFT, it is designed to generate lessons other programs could use to strengthen implementation quality and harness insights from written notes and other forms of unstructured text.