The MBFT Family Support Service

Mentalization Based Family Therapy (MBFT) is a brief intervention for children or young people, from 7 to 18 years of age, and their families. The service offers 6 - 10 meetings, usually at fortnightly intervals. Families may come to the MBFT Family Support Service with a whole range of difficulties including:

What happens in a meeting?

The main focus of this treatment is on the relationships within your family.  In the meeting your family and the therapist can think about troubles you are experiencing. We aim to provide a calm, non-judgemental setting, where the therapist will invite everyone to think about their own feelings and those of other family members in order to find more positive ways of getting along together.

Is the Family Support Service free?

The Anna Freud Centre is a registered charity and receives grants from the John Lyons Charity and the Priory Foundation to help us to offer the MBFT Family Support Service. We also ask families for financial contributions on a contribute-as-you-can-afford basis, in order to allow us to offer this service to more families in need. No family will be refused help on the grounds of inability to make a financial contribution.

How do we evaluate our service?

In addition to the meetings with the therapist you will be asked to fill in some questionnaires at the beginning and end of your involvement with the Service. These questionnaires are not seen by the therapists but are an opportunity for us to learn more about your experience, in order to improve the services. Findings from the study so far indicate that 6-10 meetings with an MBFT therapist can make a real difference to a majority of families. (For more information about this research, please click here).

How can we access this service?

We encourage parents to contact us directly but we also accept referrals from GP’s and other services.  All families that fall within our catchment area will be offered an initial half an hour telephone consultation in order to decide whether the MBFT service would be most helpful for your family, or to help you think about what other options are available. The nine London boroughs within our catchment area are: Harrow, Barnet, Brent, Camden, City of London, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham and Ealing.

For more information or to make a referral please contact Katharina Watt on 020 7443 2230 or katharina.watt@annafreud.org.

Please note: The Anna Freud Centre also offers a short course in MBFT for those working with young people and their families, which introduces the key elements of this type of therapy.