What is The Multi-Family Project?
Multi-family therapy (MFT) has, at its heart, the belief that families have all the inner resources they need to make positive changes. Practitioners create contexts that enable families to mobilise their own resources and move forwards. The Multi-Family Project operates on a similar principle. There are thousands of MFT practitioners and aspiring practitioners. However, there are interesting challenges, from implementation to evaluation. The Multi-Family Project is a context that will bring the international multi-family community together, enabling to them overcome barriers and meet the rapidly growing need for mental health support.
This is our temporary holding page where you can learn more and register an interest. Our full site will launch in May 2025.
Our mission
The Multi-Family Project is a non-profit organisation which is committed to:
- Supporting aspiring and qualified MFT practitioners
- Developing training and practice standards for MFT
- Promoting MFT research and evaluation
- Giving families a voice
- Expanding and levelling up the workforce by improving equity and access to training and resources*
Profit is re-invested to further the above aims and progress is reported to all members of the community.
* by subsidising services for under-represented and lower income practitioners and countries
How will it work?
The Multi-Family Project will provide information about MFT and become a home for the MFT community. It will offer practitioners:
- An online forum where practitioners can connect and support one another across three main areas: research, practice and networking.
- A resource hub where practitioners can share and access research and resources to support implementation, clinical practice and evaluation.
- An activity map where practitioners can see and add activity to a world map.
- 'The family voice' where MFT attendees can anonymously share their views on what works and what doesn’t, so that the community can learn from the people who matter most.
- Training courses, bespoke training, consultation and supervision on multi-family practice, research and service evaluation, competency frameworks and links to other training organisations.
Members of the community can make new posts or search existing posts and resources using key labels such as problem type, location and language. They can also share their profile and, with mutual agreement, securely connect with other practitioners.
Who is behind the project?
The Multi-Family Project was founded in October 2024 by Dr Emma Morris who is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and multi-family practitioner, supervisor, trainer and researcher. She is based in the UK where she worked in the NHS for 15 years and the charity sector for 10 years. She has practiced MFT in social care, health and school settings with parents in conflict, parents and infants, families where there are child protection concerns, adoptive families, and families where there are difficulties at school. She has published research on MFT and is co-author of the book "Systemic Multi-Family Therapy: Concepts and Interventions". She is consulting closely with a broad range of people internationally in the process of developing the project, including MFT experts. One such expert is Eia Asen, widely recognised as one of the founders of the model and with whom she has worked closely for 20 years, including for 10 years at the Marlborough Family Service in London. More information will be provided about the people behind the project when we go live in May 2025.
Interested to know more?
New to Multi-Family Therapy?
What is MFT?
MFT brings together 6-8 families who have a problem or difficulty in common. Two practitioners work with the families to create specifically tailored relational contexts via different, often playful, activities. These can involve the whole group, any sub-groups or individual group members. They work by helping families to learn from each other and experiment with new ways of interacting which bring about possibilities for change. Families usually engage well due to the reduced stigma and the emerging solidarity which is carefully fostered in multi-family groups (see "How does it work?"). MFT has been successfully employed (see "What is the evidence base?") for a wide range of different problems* across many different delivery settings** all over the world. It is a flexible approach, with format, length and frequency of groups varying depending on the problem and setting, and it can be used on its own or in conjunction with other interventions. MFT aims to mobilise families’ existing resources in ways that connect with their specific social and cultural contexts. As such, it provides a genuine opportunity to increase the reach and effectiveness of mental health provision at a time when need has never been so great and when services are often not reaching those who need it most (see "The added value of MFT")
* Including ADHD, adoptive families, anxiety, ASD, child protection concerns, complex families with multiple needs, depression, parents in conflict, parents and infants, physical health, psychosis, school attendance, school engagement, self-harm, trauma, young carers, waiting lists.
**Including mental health, physical health, social care and education settings
How does it work?
MFT has its roots in systemic family therapy*, with a focus on social and cultural contexts and on identifying and changing relational patterns. In more recent years it has integrated Mentalization-based conceptual frameworks and techniques**. Families attending benefit from reduced stigma ("we’re not the only ones!") and the opportunity to observe and reflect on the experiences of families with similar difficulties to their own. MFT practitioners actively try and de-centralise themselves whenever it is safe and possible to do so, as opposed to positioning themselves as ‘experts with answers’. Their expertise lies in skilfully creating relational contexts that mobilise families’ own resources. MFT practitioners do so via different (often playful) activities that can involve the whole group or any sub-group. They respond to the needs of families by continually creating new, relevant contexts that build on the multi-family group’s strengths. Where specific knowledge and expertise are relevant***, these are introduced tentatively, with the recognition that families have their own knowledge and expertise and that the advice of professionals may or may not be useful. Participation in MFT activities lead to the emergence of new relational experiences in a spontaneous and natural way as families help one another to experiment with new ways of interacting. From these experiences emerge new understanding and consideration of changes that can be transferred outside of the group setting. As the practitioners work hard to de-centralise themselves, responsibility is shared more evenly across the group members, with families supporting and challenging one another through a position of solidarity.
*Systemic family therapy treats the family as a unit. It helps individuals manage their difficulties within the context of their family relationships, understanding how individual actions affect each other and the family as a whole
** Mentalization is the ability to understand the mental state – of oneself and/or others – that underlies overt behaviour. Mentalization-based therapy aims to strengthen mentalizing capacity
*** for example, psychoeducation or cognitive and behavioural approaches to managing specific difficulties.
The added value of MFT
MFT extends both reach and effectiveness of traditional mental health provision. It uses the existing resources of family members and the healing power of social connection to strengthen mental health in a lively, natural and generalisable way and can be easily delivered in community settings. This makes it widely acceptable and accessible, including to minoritised groups who are often not helped by existing provision. As it is an approach that does not require practitioners to be highly specialist mental health professionals, MFT can be grown as a resource relatively quickly and inexpensively.
What is the evidence base?
A large amount of research around MFT has been conducted over the years, including numerous Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs), and there is significant evidence to indicate the effectiveness of the approach in different settings*. There is also substantial qualitative research describing the benefits of the naturalistic, de-stigmatising setting from the perspective of family members. The next step is to bring together research methodology and factors regarding treatment delivery so that we can draw broader conclusions about the model.
* Asen, E., Morris, E., & Pommepuy, N. (2024). Systemic Multi-Family Therapy: Concepts and Interventions. Taylor & Francis.