An exploration of the nature and function of psychoanalytic parent work with adoptive parents

There has been an increase in the number of adopted children seen by psychotherapists (Rance, 2003), and yet little is known about the nature and function of the interventions with adoptive parents that run alongside this work (Whitefield and Midgley, 2015; Robinson, Luyten and Midgley, 2017). This study explores the experiences of four psychoanalytic child psychotherapists, who work in a specialist fostering, adoption and kinship care child and adolescent mental health service (FAKC CAMHS), in carrying out parent work with adoptive parents. Semi structured interviews were used to collect the data, which was then analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Seven superordinate themes shared between clinicians emerged from the data: ‘Seeing the child’, ‘Talking about the trauma’, ‘Getting alongside’, ‘Going there’, ‘Seeing the parent’, ‘Finding the space’, ‘Bridging the gap’. The practitioners’ experiences conveyed the complexity of working with adoptive parents, the approach they took, and the dilemmas and technical challenges they came across. Parallels between the findings and the literature on psychoanalytic theory and practice around work with looked-after and adoptive children and psychoanalytic parent work were found. It is argued that the insights the study provides could be drawn upon to further define, inform and provoke debate about the contribution child psychotherapists make to this work and the possible need for further training and support for child psychotherapists in this specialist area.