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Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families
BACKGROUND: Children in foster care are psychologically vulnerable and show more social, developmental, and behavioral problems than those living with their family of origin. Many foster parents struggle to care for these children, some of whom have experienced severe adversity. Research and theory...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9990345/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36879301 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01103-8 |
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author | Dalgaard, Nina Thorup Villumsen, Anne Marie Anker Sørensen, Kresta Munkholt Midgley, Nick Væver, Mette Skovgaard Almlund, Mathilde Pontoppidan, Maiken |
author_facet | Dalgaard, Nina Thorup Villumsen, Anne Marie Anker Sørensen, Kresta Munkholt Midgley, Nick Væver, Mette Skovgaard Almlund, Mathilde Pontoppidan, Maiken |
author_sort | Dalgaard, Nina Thorup |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Children in foster care are psychologically vulnerable and show more social, developmental, and behavioral problems than those living with their family of origin. Many foster parents struggle to care for these children, some of whom have experienced severe adversity. Research and theory suggest that developing a strong and supportive foster parent–child relationship is essential for foster children to become more well-adjusted and experience a decrease in behavioral problems and emotional maladjustment. Mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families aims at increasing the reflective functioning of the foster parents, thus promoting the development of more secure and less disorganized child attachment representations, which is subsequently proposed as a factor that reduces behavioral problems and emotional maladjustment in children and promotes their overall well-being. METHODS: This is a prospective cluster-randomized controlled trial with two conditions: (1) the intervention group participating in MBT, and (2) the control group who receive usual care. Participants are 175 foster families with at least one foster child aged 4–17 years with emotional or behavioral problems. The intervention will be offered to foster families by 46 foster care consultants from 10 municipalities in Denmark. The foster care consultants will be randomized to MBT training (n = 23) or usual care (n = 23). The primary outcome is the psychosocial adjustment of the foster child measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) as reported by foster parents. Secondary outcomes include child well-being, parental stress, parent mental health, parent reflective function and mind-mindedness, parent/child relations, child attachment representations, and placement breakdown. In order to explore implementation fidelity as well as practitioner experiences, we will administer questionnaires designed for this study and conduct qualitative research exploring the practice of the MBT therapists. DISCUSSION: This trial is the first experimental study of a family therapeutic intervention based on attachment theory for foster families within the Scandinavian context. This project will contribute with novel knowledge on attachment representations in foster children and the effects of an attachment-based intervention on essential outcomes for foster families and children. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05196724. Registered on January 19, 2022. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9990345 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99903452023-03-08 Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families Dalgaard, Nina Thorup Villumsen, Anne Marie Anker Sørensen, Kresta Munkholt Midgley, Nick Væver, Mette Skovgaard Almlund, Mathilde Pontoppidan, Maiken BMC Psychol Study Protocol BACKGROUND: Children in foster care are psychologically vulnerable and show more social, developmental, and behavioral problems than those living with their family of origin. Many foster parents struggle to care for these children, some of whom have experienced severe adversity. Research and theory suggest that developing a strong and supportive foster parent–child relationship is essential for foster children to become more well-adjusted and experience a decrease in behavioral problems and emotional maladjustment. Mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families aims at increasing the reflective functioning of the foster parents, thus promoting the development of more secure and less disorganized child attachment representations, which is subsequently proposed as a factor that reduces behavioral problems and emotional maladjustment in children and promotes their overall well-being. METHODS: This is a prospective cluster-randomized controlled trial with two conditions: (1) the intervention group participating in MBT, and (2) the control group who receive usual care. Participants are 175 foster families with at least one foster child aged 4–17 years with emotional or behavioral problems. The intervention will be offered to foster families by 46 foster care consultants from 10 municipalities in Denmark. The foster care consultants will be randomized to MBT training (n = 23) or usual care (n = 23). The primary outcome is the psychosocial adjustment of the foster child measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) as reported by foster parents. Secondary outcomes include child well-being, parental stress, parent mental health, parent reflective function and mind-mindedness, parent/child relations, child attachment representations, and placement breakdown. In order to explore implementation fidelity as well as practitioner experiences, we will administer questionnaires designed for this study and conduct qualitative research exploring the practice of the MBT therapists. DISCUSSION: This trial is the first experimental study of a family therapeutic intervention based on attachment theory for foster families within the Scandinavian context. This project will contribute with novel knowledge on attachment representations in foster children and the effects of an attachment-based intervention on essential outcomes for foster families and children. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05196724. Registered on January 19, 2022. BioMed Central 2023-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9990345/ /pubmed/36879301 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01103-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Study Protocol Dalgaard, Nina Thorup Villumsen, Anne Marie Anker Sørensen, Kresta Munkholt Midgley, Nick Væver, Mette Skovgaard Almlund, Mathilde Pontoppidan, Maiken Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families |
title | Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families |
title_full | Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families |
title_fullStr | Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families |
title_full_unstemmed | Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families |
title_short | Holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (MBT) for foster families |
title_sort | holding a foster child’s mind in mind: study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial of mentalization-based therapy (mbt) for foster families |
topic | Study Protocol |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9990345/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36879301 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01103-8 |
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