A Compassion-Focused Therapy group for young people who live in foster, adoptive or kinship care: Initial development, reflections, and ways forward

Abstract

Care-experienced youth are more likely than their peers to present with earlier, more severe and more chronic mental health difficulties. This case study presents the development of a Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) group for young people who do not live with their birth families due to an early history of abuse and neglect, delivered by psychologists in a social care service. Eight adolescent girls (aged 12–16), who lived in foster, adoptive or kinship care, attended eight face-to-face weekly sessions of a ‘Building Your Self-Confidence’ group. Most of them attended all sessions, found the group ‘enjoyable’ and ‘interesting’, and reported finding it helpful to improve their self-confidence at least to some extent (‘a little’ or ‘yes’). On standardised measures, half of the caregivers reported improvements in their child’s mental health but none of the adolescents did themselves. These initial data pave the way to further optimise the application of group CFT for care-experienced youth and inform psychological treatment innovation in youth more generally. Plain Language Summary Young people who grow up with significant trauma such as abuse and neglect, are often taken into the care of the local authority at some point in their lives when they cannot remain at home. These young people tend to experience high levels of mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Innovative approaches to improve mental health in this population are therefore crucial. In this paper, we describe a therapy group called ‘Building Your Self-Confidence’, based on a therapy model called Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT). This group was attended by eight adolescent girls aged between 12 and 16 who lived in foster, adoptive or kinship care. There were eight weekly face-to-face sessions in total, delivered by psychologists within a social care service in the UK. We found that most of the adolescents attended all the sessions and commented that they found the group ‘enjoyable’ and ‘interesting’, and that their self-confidence was somehow improved. On questionnaires measuring mental health difficulties, half of the caregivers reported that their adolescents’ mental health improved. However, adolescents themselves did not report improvements in mental health in these questionnaires. Overall, this therapeutic group is promising but needs to be refined so that its benefits can be maximised.