Clayton, G., Fox, S., Glorney. (2024)

In the United Kingdom, there are record-high rates of suspension and permanent exclusion (Office for National Statistics [ONS], 2024). Excluded young people are more likely to have poorer mental health (Tejerina-Arreal, 2020), not be in education, employment or training (Marmot, 2020) and be involved in the criminal justice system (Rosenbaum, 2020). While school-based interventions targeting individual behaviour have shown a small reduction in exclusion rates in the short term (Gaffney et al., 2021), there is a need for systemic interventions to support excluded young people. Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is a systemic intervention which aims to increase engagement in education. MST must be evaluated to ensure it meets the needs of the excluded population. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of young people, caregivers, MST therapists, and educationalists involved in MST when addressing exclusion from school. It seeks to identify the barriers and facilitators of MST to promote inclusion in education post-exclusion. The data from 13 interviews was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were developed from the data: the timing of MST in the context of school exclusion, increasing communication with schools, overcoming practical barriers to inclusion in education, and ending and sustainability. The study discusses the facilitators and barriers of MST implementation and offers recommendations for practice and future research.