What is CIFFTA?

Our Culturally Informed and Flexible Family Based Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) has focused on addressing several treatment challenges:

  • Addressing the shortage of interventions that are culturally informed and able to impact the unique and often hidden risk processes of minority adolescents.
  • Moving away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach and toward a treatment that can be tailored to the unique experiences and needs of individual children and families.
  • Effectively engaging and retaining minority adolescents and families in treatment.
  • Not only reducing family risk factors but also mobilizing family protective/resiliency factors that can buffer children and adolescents in high risk environments.

 

How our program works:

CIFFTA is a multi-component treatment that consists of family focused and individually focused interventions, and psycho-educational modules addressing a number of key topic areas (e.g., drug use, parenting, immigration and acculturation stress). CIFFTA can be delivered in a one session or two sessions per week format depending on the severity of the symptoms. All interventions are designed to facilitate more adaptive and supportive family relationships and healthy adolescent development. CIFFTA’s specializing in engaging and treating disadvantaged and underserved youth and families who often do not seek treatment. Families’ and counselors’ feedback was used to refine and improve all of CIFFTA’s services. The treatment has been developed and tested with both primarily English speaking and primarily Spanish speaking adolescents and families so that diversity is built into the content.

Who CIFFTA works with?

CIFFTA is designed for counselors, supervisors, and administrators who are interested in providing effective treatments to diverse populations and who wish to understand how the unique stressors experienced by diverse populations impact treatment processes and outcomes. CIFFTA is designed to help adolescents ranging in ages from 11 to 18 years old. The treatment has been tested with samples of adolescents who exhibited the full continuum of behaviors ranging from early behavior problems, to diagnosable substance use disorders, to juvenile court involvement and hospitalizations for psychiatric symptoms. The adjustments needed to deliver the model to populations on the behavior continuum are specified (e.g., increased dosage, more focus on drug use and juvenile justice system involvement) in this manual.

A major innovation is that CIFFTA is a flexible/adaptive treatment that can be tailored to the unique clinical (e.g., depression) and cultural (e.g., acculturation-related conflicts within the family) characteristics of the adolescent and family. This tailoring aspect of the treatment makes it highly patient-centered and relevant to the adolescent’s specific needs and preferences. CIFFTA provides adolescents with the skills and knowledge needed to react more effectively in the face of stressors while also stimulating the protective and healing processes in caregivers so that they can effectively guide their children. One of the primary ways to reduce the impact of difficult environments for high risk youth is through effective and supportive parenting.

It is our hope that the CIFFTA training and implementation package can help counselors and supervisors to become more effective in their important work. Now more than ever, the youngest and most vulnerable youth and their families need services that are efficient and effective when delivered in multicultural communities.

What exactly is a Hispanic/Latino?


There is great complexity and diversity under the “Hispanic” or “Latino” umbrella.  Cubans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans Puerto Rican and Spaniards may share common linguistic, cultural, and family values, but there are also substantial differences between them.  Differences include reasons for and route of historical and current migration, length of residence in the U.S., level of acculturation, traditionalism, social class, education, and other life experiences (marginalization and immigration-related separations) all of which can impact treatment process. The experience of a Mexican American whose family has been in New Mexico for three generations, or a Puerto Rican whose family has been living on the island for the same amount of time, may differ greatly from a Venezuelan who has been in the U.S. for four months.  Many individuals called “Hispanic” would prefer to be called “Latino” and most can point out the overgeneralizations that occur with the use of any such label. Some will say that the term Hispanic over-emphasizes the Spanish roots and that the term Latino not only de-emphasizes the influence of Spain but is also a more inclusive term that includes mixed races known as "mestizo" or "mulato" in Central and South America and in the Caribbean. What we do know is that when asked, most people prefer to be known by their country of origin (e.g., Mexican, Honduran, or Puerto Rican) and not by either umbrella label. While it is common to use terms such as “Hispanic” or “Latino” for sake of convenience and to attempt to point to commonalities shared by a larger group of people, it is important to always keep in mind the substantial limitations of such categorical labels.