The Center for Family Based Training provides specialized training and consultation to behavioral health professionals working in the community with high-risk youth and their multi-stressed families. Our mission is to develop a work force of skilled therapists and supervisors who can effectively apply a strength-focused, evidence-informed, ecosystemic approach to treating youth and their families. Having more skilled family therapists and supervisors translates to better outcomes for youth and families grappling with serious emotional and behavioral challenges. 

Dr. C. Wayne Jones founded the Center for Family Based Training in 2009.  Like Dr. Jones, CFBT’s senior faculty members, such as Andy Fussner and Jorge Colapinto, spent their early careers as family therapists at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center (PCGC), internationally renowned for its innovative systemic approach to the treatment of children and adolescents developed by Dr. Sal Minuchin.  Together these faculty have over 120 years of experience, not only in treating families, but also in training therapists to work with children in the context of their families.

PCGC’s family therapy training center was widely known and respected for its passionate, creative, engaging teaching style. CFBT faculty carry on this tradition, which has earned it a reputation for exceptional family therapy training.  Dr. Jones and the faculty at CFBT are well-known for their skill in teaching “that makes sense,” presenting complex concepts in a way that is easy to digest and learn.

The empirically supported treatment approach that informs our training, EcoSystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT), was influenced by the work of Salvador Minuchin and his Structural Model of Family Therapy developed at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center in the early 1970s.  ESFT is based on the idea that a child’s functioning is best understood and treated within the context of family and community relationships. ESFT was developed by Dr. Marion Lindblad-Goldberg.  Dr. Jones, who collaborated with Dr. Lindblad-Goldberg for many years, published an ESFT treatment manual in 2009 which operationalized ESFT and its application to intensive in-home services.  A second edition of this treatment manual is now available. Click here for more information.