Dr. Schaeffer's research focuses on developing, evaluating, and ensuring the successful real-world implementation of interventions for youth involved in, or at high risk of involvement in, the juvenile justice and child protective service (CPS) systems. Dr. Schaeffer’s focus is on effectively addressing the many complex clinical and psychosocial problems facing youth involved in these systems and their families, including: criminal offending; school dropout and expulsion; substance abuse; physical and emotional abuse; trauma symptomology; ineffective parenting; family conflict and family violence, including child witnessing of intimate partner violence; low social support; and deviant peer relationships. Dr. Schaeffer’s work has been highly influenced by Multisystemic Therapy (MST), an ecological, empirically-supported family-based intervention originally designed for juvenile offenders. She is an expert in this treatment model, having served as an MST therapist for several years treating juveniles with serious and chronic offending patterns including sexual offending, and she has served as a clinical consultant to MST treatment teams ever since. Dr. Schaeffer adapted MST for families involved with CPS due to child maltreatment and caregiver substance abuse (model known as MST-Building Stronger Families) and for CPS-involved families experiencing both child maltreatment and intimate partner violence (model known as MST-IPV). She has also developed other innovative interventions for juvenile justice- and CPS-involved populations, including a mobile phone app to support effective parental management of youth behavior and an ecological intervention that promotes youth success in mainstream peer groups.