Multisystemic Therapy: Theory, Principles and Practice with Young People and Families

This premium programme is a comprehensive, practice-focused course on Multisystemic Therapy for family therapists, social workers, youth justice practitioners, psychologists, counsellors, child and adolescent mental health practitioners, school staff, supervisors and commissioners who work with young people whose serious antisocial behaviour places them at risk of care or custody. It explains what the model is, why it was developed, how it works in practice, what the evidence shows and how its ideas can be used honestly in other services. The course is a programme of continuing professional development. It does not license or certify anyone to deliver Multisystemic Therapy, which is a licensed model delivered by teams that are trained, supervised and quality assured within a licensed network. Practitioners who want to practise the model should apply to work in a licensed team. Multisystemic Therapy and MST are registered trademarks of MST Services, LLC in the United States. This course is independent of, and not endorsed by, MST Services, and it does not reproduce any manuals, forms or adherence measure items; it describes principles and processes in its own words, as the published literature does. The course is current to October 2026. It teaches the evidence with balance, including the early trials in the United States, the meta-analyses and Cochrane review that reached different conclusions, the London trial with young offenders, and the START trial in nine English sites, which found no advantage for MST over management as usual on out-of-home placement or offending, together with its five-year follow-up. Safeguarding content reflects Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 and the information sharing duty in force from 30 September 2026. Across six modules and thirty lessons you will study the origins of the model, social ecology, the evidence, fidelity and referral criteria; the nine treatment principles and the analytic process; engagement, assessment across systems, case conceptualisation with testable hypotheses, supervision and consultation, and safety and safeguarding in home-based work; interventions with parenting and monitoring, family relationships, peers, school, and individual and caregiver difficulties; adaptations for substance misuse, child abuse and neglect, problem sexual behaviour, psychiatric crisis, health care, transitions and emerging adults, together with culture, diversity and equity; and implementation in UK services, outcome measurement, discharge and relapse prevention, ethical borrowing in non-MST practice, and supervision-level ethics and wellbeing. Every lesson contains a worked clinical example, the common pitfalls in practice and a reflective question, together with key points, a practice task for the week, study activities and further reading. The course includes an extended case study, a glossary and a 25-question assessment with a pass mark of 80 per cent. Every reference has been checked against its publisher, its digital object identifier, legislation.gov.uk or the issuing body. Throughout, the course treats caregivers as the people best placed to change a young person's world, treats engagement and progress as the practitioner's responsibility, and asks you to face the evidence honestly, including where it is disappointing.