Implementing a brief mentalisation-based intervention for foster carers and adoptive parents in a child and adolescent mental health service setting: practitioner experiences

Examining the professional experiences of mental health and social care practitioners in real-world settings contributes to understanding best practice in intervention approaches designed to support foster carers and adoptive parents. Focusing on these experiences helps apprehend contextual considerations relating to intervention delivery, as well as mechanisms of intervention therapeutic action. Contributing to such work, this article reports findings from a service evaluation that involved examining practitioner perspectives on a group mentalisation-based psychoeducation intervention in a single specialist child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) setting. For the service evaluation, interviews were undertaken with a multidisciplinary group of six practitioners who supported the intervention’s introduction, five in facilitating group sessions with parents/carers. Data were subjected to thematic analysis which yielded three main themes. These related to: the intervention’s compatibility with the practice context; challenges and benefits of implementing the intervention online via videoconferencing; and perceptions of foster carer and adoptive parent experiences. The findings indicate that, in a CAMHS setting, this type of intervention is most beneficial when there is careful consideration of other appropriate support available to parents/carers and when staff have the capacity and competencies to deliver the intervention online.