Parental Mentalizing in the Child Protection Context: Research and Clinical Perspectives

ABSTRACT

The Lighthouse Parenting Programme (LPP) is a multifamily mentalization-based intervention for parents with child protection service involvement. The Supporting Parents Project was a randomized controlled trial of the LPP being delivered by children’s social care services. In this paper, the research and clinical leads of the project present some of their early findings and thinking in relation to parental mentalizing in this context. Early findings from the study showed unexpected results in relation to the assessment of parental reflective functioning. Issues around the measurement of parental mentalizing, and particularly pre-mentalizing modes, are discussed. We argue that learning from clinicians with experience of supporting parents through a mentalization-based approach can help researchers become more nuanced in their assessments. In the second half of the paper, we present some of the metaphors and imagery used in the LPP that has proven useful in helping parents and frontline practitioners to establish epistemic trust and methods for enhancing parental mentalizing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the What Works for Children’s Social Care.

Notes on contributors

Michelle Sleed

Michelle Sleed is a senior research fellow and deputy director of the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy doctoral training at the Anna Freud Centre and University College London. Her work is focused on parent-child relationships, parental mentalizing and evaluating clinical interventions for families.

Gerry Byrne

Gerry Byrne is a consultant child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist, a consultant nurse, an adult psychotherapist, and a DPhil candidate at Oxford University. He is also a mentalisation-based treatment (MBT) practitioner, supervisor, and trainer, and the developer of the Lighthouse Parenting Programme.

Guilherme Fiorini

Guilherme Fiorini is a Research Officer at the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe) and Research Tutor at the MSc in Early Child Development and Clinical Applications, Anna Freud/UCL.