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It is well established that looked after children are more likely to develop complex behavioural and emotional difficulties that can leave many carers struggling to help and understand the child. This can lead to the breakdown of placements whereby the lack of placement stability leaves the child even more vulnerable. The Family Minds (FM) psycho-educational and interactive programme is a newly developed intervention for groups of foster and adoptive parents. It lasts for nine hours and comprises elements of mentalisation-based family therapy, lectures, group exercises and homework, with the aim that parents will be able to better understand and support their fostered or adopted child through increased reflective functioning. In a study undertaken in Texas we evaluated whether there was a change in the parents' reflective functioning (verbal mentalisation) pre-to post-FM training compared to a comparison group who experienced a 'treatment as usual' intervention comprising four hours of lecture information about trauma and attachment. Using five-minute speech samples pre-and post-training, we coded whether the capacity to think reflectively about oneself and one's child altered in either training group. We found that, unlike the comparison group, parents in the FM group significantly increased their reflective functioning. This outcome was independent of several factors such as the age of the parent, age of the child and time as a carer. The only factor influencing the significant change was the training group in which the parent was placed. These findings suggest that this novel mentalisation-based psycho-educational training programme can successfully increase parents' reflective functioning which, in turn, should enhance and strengthen the understanding and relationship between the foster/adoptive parent and the child and reduce negative outcomes.

Family Minds is a brief group psychoeducational parenting intervention designed to increase the reflective functioning (RF) and mentalization skills of foster parents. RF is important for foster parents who have to build relationships with children whose adverse experiences increase their risk for psychosocial challenges. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) for Family Minds was conducted in Texas with 89 foster parents. The main aims of this study were to examine whether the intervention could significantly increase the RF/mentalization skills of the foster parents and decrease their parenting stress. After 6 weeks, compared with the control group, intervention foster parents improved their RF via a lowering of pre-mentalizing and also significantly decreased parenting stress related to parent–child dysfunctional interactions. Other measures of RF and parenting stress showed no significant differences between groups. Foster child behavior was not significantly different between groups, although data at 6 months showed a possible lowering of internalizing symptoms for children of intervention parents. This RCT provides some encouraging evidence that Family Minds may increase RF in foster parents, improve parental sensitivity and their ability to emotionally regulate, decrease parenting stress related to challenging interactions with their foster children, and possibly decrease children's internalizing behavior.

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