Response Deadline: April 17, 2025, by 12:00P.M.

There will be a non-mandatory virtual conference on March 24, 2025, at 10:00 AM The link for the conference is: https://www.zoomgov.com/j/1600063338

The New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF) Division of Family and Community Partnerships (FCP), Office of Family Preservation and Reunification (FPR), announces its intent to award contracts for Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT® ). The BSFT® model uses a structured, problem-focused, directive, and practical approach to the treatment of child/adolescent conduct problems.

This approach includes the identification of externalizing (e.g., substance abuse, acting-out, truancy, bullying) and internalizing (e.g., depression, anxiety) symptomatology in youth ages six (6) up to and including age seventeen (17) years while restructuring problematic family interactions. It uniquely addresses cognitive, behavioral, and affective aspects of family life. The BSFT® model incorporates effective processes of change from other models including strategic and structural approaches, existential/emotive therapy, eco-systemic approaches, and cognitive behavioral approaches. The BSFT® model is a trauma-sensitive, culturally competent, strength-based model.

Through focused interventions and skill-building strategies, BSFT® provides families with the tools to overcome individual and family risk factors. The approach is based on the belief that family-based interactions strongly influence how children behave, and that targeting and improving maladaptive family interactions reduces the likelihood of symptomatic behavior.

The therapist works with the family to identify interactional patterns that give rise to and/or maintain problematic youth behavior and internalized and externalized symptoms. After these patterns are identified, the therapist helps the family change these patterns to encourage positive family interactions.

The BSFT® model fosters parental leadership, appropriate parental involvement, mutual support among parenting figures, family communication, problem solving, clear rules and consequences, nurturing, and shared responsibility for family problems. In addition, because the efficacy of BSFT® does depend on family’s abilities to come into the session, BSFT® provides specialized engagement strategies for bringing families into therapy.

Respondents must submit a separate response for each region it is interested in serving. A respondent may submit up to two (2) responses and may be awarded the opportunity to form a contract for up to two (2) regions.