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Depression in young people is common, and their daily care management often lies with their parents. Young people and clinicians depend on parents for attendance and adherence to treatment, and there is growing evidence that parents’ participation benefits their child’s treatment outcomes. Engagement with parents has therefore recently attracted interest in the field of children’s mental health. Research in the area highlights parents’ perceptions around engagement, the quality of their involvement, and the nature of the intervention offered to them as crucial variables for positive outcomes for the child. There is, however, a lack of research on parents’ involvement in children’s psychoanalytic interventions. This study explores parents’ views and experiences of parent work as part of the Short-Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (STPP) offered to their depressed adolescent child. This qualitative study used thematic analysis to analyse 19 semi-structured interviews with parents of adolescents at the end of their STPP treatment. The interviews were collected as part of the ‘Improving mood with psychoanalytic and cognitive therapies – my experience’ (IMPACT-ME) study. Parents generally valued involvement in their child’s treatment, but their views of therapy, being seen separately, and their first contact with CAMHS shaped how they engaged in parent work. When they attended sessions, their perception of the parent worker and the therapeutic space strongly influenced their participation. Their sense of parent work’s usefulness depended on how meaningfully they could take part. Parents used the sessions in varied ways, from offloading and seeking information to reflecting on change and family dynamics. Recommendations are drawn from the research to help clinicians improve parents’ meaningful engagement and outcomes. Understanding parents’ experience of support in the context of their child’s treatment for depression could contribute to improving the outcome of therapy for their children.