The Focal Play Therapy with Children and Parents: How to promote the Parent-Therapist Alliance

The therapeutic alliance is a crucial variable in explaining the outcome of psychotherapy across different treatments. While most of research to date is about the alliance in individual psychotherapy, more recent are studies on the alliance in family and, even more, in child-focused therapy. Nowadays parents represent essential components to youth’s treatment success. Parental engagement allows the therapist to better understand child’s symptoms within family dynamics and, at the same time, to build an alliance with parents based on a mutual understanding of the child’s problems and on their collaboration and agreement on the main goals and tasks of the intervention. The “Focal Play Therapy with children and parents” (FPT-CP; Trombini & Trombini, 2006, 2007; Trombini E., 2010, 2011, 2016) is actually used for several problems in preschool children connected to parent-child relationships. Goals of the first six sessions are: the assessment of child’s symptoms within family relationships and the promotion of the alliance with parents. The present study explored the quality of the parent-therapist relationship at two time points that coincide with the FPT-CP first and sixth sessions. A multi-method approach was used to collect data from 17 parental couples and their children (age range=2-5). Differences in alliance scores among parents and among each parent and therapist were investigated. Parental personality, levels of parenting stress and the quality of parent-child interactions were assessed. Further, relationships among multiple parental variables were investigated followed by an exemplification with two contrasting clinical cases. Findings of the present research advise that special attention should be paid to the building of alliance with parents early in treatment. Empirical evidence has shown that the FPT-CP is a specific model of clinical intervention that is effective in promoting and maintaining a positive therapeutic relationship with parents seen as a precondition for a successful child-focused intervention.