Family stress

Where to start

Where money or housing is part of it, solving the practical problem does more for a child than anything said to them about it.

• Citizens Advice. Free, independent advice on the practical layer: housing, benefits, debt, employment, and your rights when a family separates. When the worry is partly a practical problem wearing an emotional coat. Solving the practical part often lowers the temperature at home more than anything else will. www.citizensadvice.org.uk
• MoneyHelper. The government-backed free money guidance service, including a debt advice locator. When money is part of what is happening at home. Children read household stress long before anyone explains it to them. www.moneyhelper.org.uk
• Your child’s school. The pastoral lead, the head of year, or the form tutor. Free, already knows your child, and often the fastest route to a change that helps. Before or alongside anything else. A school cannot act on what it has not been told, and what you bring is often what it did not have.
• Your GP. The gateway to everything the NHS offers a child: paediatric assessment, a referral to CAMHS, and support for you as the parent. Ask for a double appointment. Describe the pattern over weeks rather than the worst single day, and say plainly what you are worried about. Bring a written list; the ten minutes go quickly. www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-gp

For family stress

• Family Lives. A free confidential helpline for any parenting concern. I send parents here when the question is about them, not about the child. When the chapter is about the experience of parenting itself, the family system, or a parent who needs to be listened to. Particularly strong for bullying and for the parent who is holding things together at the edge of their capacity. Family Lives confidential helpline 0808 800 2222 · Mon-Fri 9am-9pm; weekends 10am-3pm · Live chat Mon-Fri 10.30am-9pm; WhatsApp 07441 444125; email askus@familylives.org.uk www.familylives.org.uk
• Home-Start UK. The UK’s family-support network of trained volunteers visiting families at home. The right pointer for the parent who needs the kind of help no friend can fully give, particularly in the early years. Quick tips or chapters touching parental isolation, single-parent burnout, illness in the family, or the parent simply finding the early years harder than expected. Local Home-Start charities operate across the UK and recruit volunteers from their communities. No central helpline; the right move is to find the local branch via the postcode lookup on home-start.org.uk. What is offered, and how long the wait is, vary by area. The local branch is the right first call. www.home-start.org.uk
• Netmums. A long-established UK parenting community. The right signpost when the parent needs community, not a clinician. Chapters where what the parent needs is to hear from other parents going through the same thing. Particularly useful for isolation, early-years bewilderment, and the everyday textures of family life. Treat with editorial care: peer support, not professional support. Support from other parents rather than professional advice. www.netmums.com
• Mental Health Foundation. A research and policy charity with strong family-focused resources. The right signpost when the angle is parental wellbeing or the family as a whole. Chapters about parental burnout, isolation, parental mental health affecting the child, or the family as a system. Less useful for child-specific clinical concerns; that is YoungMinds territory. www.mentalhealth.org.uk

If money is part of the pressure

• StepChange Debt Charity. The UK’s leading free debt-advice charity. The right line for the parent whose financial circumstances have changed and who needs both the practical advice and the calmer framing to have the household conversation. Quick tips and chapters on money and the family, including talking to children about money, the conversation when a job has gone, and the unembarrassed naming of what the household cannot afford. StepChange’s parent-facing material sits alongside Citizens Advice for the wider family financial layer. Debt advice is the main service here. For wider money guidance, MoneyHelper is the other place to look. StepChange Helpline 0800 138 1111 · Mon-Fri 8am-8pm; Sat 9am-2pm www.stepchange.org

If drinking, drug use or gambling is part of it

• Adfam. The leading UK families-and-addiction charity in England. The right pointer for families affected by someone else’s drinking, drug use or gambling, including parents in recovery thinking about how to talk to their children. Quick tips and chapters on substance use in the family system, including the parent in recovery and the family living alongside active addiction. Adfam runs one-to-one support sessions and signposts to local services across England; their resources on conversations between recovering parents and their children are the cleanest UK source we know. Mainly England. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the national equivalents may be the better route. adfam.org.uk
• Nacoa (National Association for Children of Alcoholics). The UK charity providing information, advice and support for anyone affected by a parent’s drinking. Helpline open to children, adults, and concerned others alike, six days a week. Quick tips and chapters where the child is, in the household, living alongside a parent’s problem drinking. Nacoa’s helpline is one of the few UK lines a child can use directly to talk about a parent’s substance use; the same line supports adult children of alcoholics, who may be the parent reading the tip. Nacoa Helpline 0800 358 3456 · Mon-Sat 10am-7pm nacoa.org.uk

If you are caring for an unwell relative, or your child is

• Carers UK. The UK’s leading carers' charity. The right pointer for the household where a parent’s chronic illness or mental-health condition has shaped the family’s daily texture, and for the children growing up inside that household. Health-and-difference tips and chapters covering the disabled-parent and young-carer territory. Carers UK runs general-population resources; the Children’s Society Young Carers Service holds the child-specific layer alongside. Carers UK Helpline 0808 808 7777 · Mon-Fri 9am-6pm www.carersuk.org
• The Children’s Society Young Carers Service. The Children’s Society’s flagship young-carers programme, with a UK-wide local-service finder. The right pointer for the child-specific layer of family-with-illness territory. Health-and-difference tips and chapters where the child has, in the household, taken on caring responsibilities. The local-service finder connects families to community-based young-carers groups in their area, which is often the support that lands best with the child. Charged at your standard call rate, not free. Include (Children’s Society Young Carers) 01962 711 511 · Mon-Fri 9am-5pm www.childrenssociety.org.uk/information/young-people/young-carers
• Age UK. The UK’s leading charity for older people. The right line for the parent caring for an unwell elderly relative while still parenting children, and for the grandparent who is structurally part of the family and now navigating her own changes. Quick tips and chapters where a grandparent’s role, illness, or bereavement is in the room, or where the parent reading is herself becoming a carer for her own parent alongside parenting her children. The daily 8am-7pm window matters; few other adult-facing lines run that consistently. Age UK Advice Line 0800 678 1602 · Daily 8am-7pm, 365 days a year www.ageuk.org.uk

If a parent is seriously ill

• Macmillan Cancer Support. The UK’s most comprehensive cancer support charity. Their pages on talking to children and teenagers about a parent’s cancer are the cleanest age-calibrated guide we know. When a parent has just had a cancer diagnosis and is rehearsing how to tell the children, or when a household is in the middle of treatment and needs practical scaffolding. Also their nurse line for clinical questions during treatment. Macmillan Support Line 0808 808 00 00 · Every day 8am-8pm · Online chat at macmillan.org.uk; nurse line within the same number for clinical questions www.macmillan.org.uk/cancer-information-and-support/diagnosis/talking-about-cancer/talking-to-children-and-teenagers

If you are parenting on your own

• Gingerbread. The UK charity for single parents. The first signpost for any chapter where the family structure itself is part of the concern. Any chapter about single parenting, co-parenting after separation, or where the family structure is shaping the concern. Helpline good for practical and emotional questions both. The advice service closed on 1 April 2025. The online information remains. · Webchat via website www.gingerbread.org.uk

If you are considering private therapy

Waiting lists are long. If you can meet the cost, a registered therapist can usually be seen in weeks rather than months. Both registers below are accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, which is the thing to check before anything else.

• BACP Therapist Directory. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s public register. Search by area, by what you are bringing, and by whether the therapist works with children. www.bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists
• NCPS Therapist Directory. The National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society’s register. Every therapist listed is qualified, supervised, insured, and accountable to a code of ethics. ncps.com/find-a-counsellor
• Kensington Square Therapy. Our own practice. We work with children, young people and parents, in the room at 23 Kensington Square, online, and inside schools we partner with. www.kst.ltd

What to look for in a therapist, what a first session is like, and the questions worth asking before you commit, are set out at theparentbook.com/finding-a-therapist

Everything else

The full directory, across every subject, is at theparentbook.com/services. If a number here has changed, please tell us at hello@theparentbook.com and we will correct it.