Service evaluation of reflective parenting groups: What are parents’ perspectives on the usefulness of RP groups in improving parental mentalisation and reflective functioning?

Abstract

Family safeguarding services bring together multi-agency professionals to support children and families. The recruitment of clinical psychologists has led to the further development of psychological interventions to support families. Reflective parenting groups are an evidence-based intervention offered in family safeguarding services which aim to enhance parents’ capacity to reflect on and mentalise their own and their child or children’s thoughts, feelings, behaviours and intentions and thus better equip them to develop positive parenting practices and relationships with their children. The importance of evaluating services is recognised as best practice. This service evaluation aims to explore parents’ experiences of reflective parenting (RP) groups and their perceptions of how useful the groups are in improving parental reflective functioning. The study employed a qualitative design and eight parents recruited through opportunistic sampling completed semi-structured interviews. Results were analysed using thematic analysis which yielded four main themes and eight subthemes. The four main themes identified were: (1) Benefits of RP groups, (2) Barriers to engaging in RP groups, (3) Different perspectives on online groups, (4) The importance of including fathers. The findings suggest that the groups are effective in improving parental reflective functioning and parents identified several benefits which are supported by the current literature. The study highlights areas of improvement which could enhance parents’ experiences such as facilitating safe and collaborative spaces for parents to share their experiences, offering in person as well as online groups and actively engaging more fathers in the groups.