What is the Meaning of the Child Interview?

The Meaning of the Child Interview (MotC) is a method of understanding the way parents think about their child(ren) through careful analysis of a semi-structured interview with the parent.  Interviews are classified using a system that examines the ways in which parents talk about their child, their relationship with their child, and their parenting.

The concept of the Meaning of the Child was developed by applying attachment theory and research on adult discourse (patterns of speaking about relationships) to the insights of Reder and Duncan (see 1995, 1999), whose seminal studies in the 1990’s of fatal child abuse highlighted the importance of attending to the particular psychological meaning that a child has for his or her parent(s).

The Meaning of the Child Interview differs from similar procedures by its focus on the parent-child relationship (rather than some attribute of the parent), as understood by how the parent thinks and talks about their child.  For this reason, it is uniquely suited to helping understand what is going in specific parent-child relationships, and assessing risk to a particular child (or particular children, if the interview is conducted about multiple relationships) as well as the resilience in particular parent-child relationships.

A leaflet/fact-sheet on the Meaning of the Child can be downloaded here.

What does the Meaning of the Child aim to do?

1. • Differentiate parents whose children who may be at risk from abuse, neglect and emotional harm from those whose are not
   

2. • Differentiate parent and child relationships, where the child’s development is at significant risk, from parents with normally developing children
   

3. •  Understand struggling or problematic relationships in ways that are useful in deciding how to intervene or offer support to the parent or family
   

4. • Identify areas of resilience in parent-child relationships, which may be the focus of supportive intervention (or show that it is not required
   

Why use the Meaning of the Child Interview?

1. 1. It is not what parents ‘know’ and can ‘perform’ that matters, but how they think and feel about their relationships
   

The problem of assessments which focus primarily on task-based observation of parenting skills in cases of child maltreatment is that parents fail in parenting less because they do not know what they should be doing, but more because they cannot apply generalised parenting ‘knowledge’ to the specific child in front of them. 

2. 2. The influence of trauma on the parent-child relationship is critical to understanding risk in parent-child relationships and parenting
   

Parents who have had adverse childhood experiences, which remain unresolved, frequently distort the meaning of their own and their child’s experience in ways that are self-protective and relate to their own experiences of danger and threat, but are not protective to their child (Crittenden 2008).

3. 3. Understanding the parent is key to assessing parenting, and risk to children
   

Much of parenting assessment amounts to observing failure rather than trying to understand what is going wrong.  This is a poor guide both to predicting what will happen in the future, and intervening to make things better.

4. 4. Using a structured assessment tool such as the MotC helps achieve greater consistency and depth of analysis in family assessment
   

The link between the MotC classificatory process, and the theory and research around relationships it is based upon, offers a lens for making sense of other information and observations, and using it to inform intervention.  Professional agencies often hold a lot of detailed knowledge of families but lack the means to piece this together into an overall understanding of how the family’s relationships operate, the level of risk involved, and what kind of intervention or support may help the child.

The History of the Meaning of the Child Interview

The Meaning of the Child was developed by Ben Grey, (PhD) as part of doctoral level research at the University of Roehampton, with the support of Juliet Kesteven (MBPsS) and other colleagues at Family Care, a former voluntary organisation based in Peteborough, UK, where Dr Grey and Ms Kesteven led a team that carried out assessment and therapeutic intervention for Local Authorities and the Family Courts.  The aim was to use expertise in attachment theory and research to develop a tool for understanding parent-child relationships, that was geared towards the needs of assessment, intervention, and decision making in social work and related professions.

The Meaning of the Child Interview has been used extensively in the Family Court arena since 2010, and taught regularly to social workers, family centre workers, psychologists, therapists and other professionals in the infant mental health field since 2011.  It is also as part of the University of Roehampton’s MsC in Attachment Studies, the only course of its kind in the UK.

Since 2012, Dr Grey and Juliet Kesteven have continued to develop the Meaning of the Child as part of their own ongoing assessment and intervention work in the Family Court arena.  Further information about their work, and full CV’s can be obtained from the Family Assessment Partnership website, here.

* For references please go here