Larisa Freiverts, Anglicare

Building adolescent readiness for change – responding effectively to families impacted by adolescent to parent violence

Anglicare Victoria has supported the work of the Meridian Youth and Family Therapy Team and the ‘Breaking the Cycle’ (BTC) – groupwork and BTC- family therapy programs for 30 years. BTC provides a systematic and tailored response to families impacted by adolescent to parent violence. BTC aims to help parents/carers (in the first instance) finds ways to hold their young person responsible and accountable for their actions, while also attending to and strengthening the relationship. BTC is a family and trauma focused intervention and shares commonalities with other models such as functional family therapy (FFT), multisystemic therapy (MST) and brief strategic family therapy (BSFT).

Larisa Freiverts is Team Leader and Senior Family Therapist of the Meridian Youth and Family Therapy Team, Anglicare Victoria. Larisa is an experienced therapist, trainer and groupwork facilitator who has worked in the community sector for 20+ years. Larisa holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Family Therapy and is the lead author of ‘Breaking the Cycle’ Facilitator and Resource Manual, 2^nd edition. Anglicare Victoria 2017. Larisa has recently completed a 3^rd evaluation of the effectiveness of BTC – groupwork intervention.