The Parent Book.
Therapist-written support for parents
Urgent help

For schoolsIn tandem, never instead

The teachers’ shelf.

Your pastoral team reads the whole library, free, and sends the right chapter to the parent who needs it.

The Parent Book is a therapist-written library for parents: the friendship that has quietly ended, the evenings that have stopped working, the worry that has started to make decisions for a child. Schools meet these conversations before anyone else does. The teachers’ shelf puts the library in your pastoral team’s hands so that when a parent stands in the doorway at pick-up, the person she trusts has something careful to give her.

There is no licence, no fee, and no partnership to sign. Your school is not a customer here; it is the person who made a good introduction.

How it worksThree steps, no procurement

Your pastoral team reads the library, free.

Heads of year, form tutors, the school counsellor, whoever holds pastoral care. The whole library, nothing held back, no accounts to administer.

A staff member sends a chapter to the parent who needs it.

A link, pasted into an email the tutor was already writing. No portal, no roll-out, no training day, and no time asked of staff beyond the conversation they were having anyway.

The parent reads that chapter in full. Free, no wall, no sign-up.

The chapter ends with a quiet note that it is one of a library written by therapists, and what the rest costs, once. Whether she subscribes is entirely hers.

Beyond the shelfWhen a school wants more

Evenings and briefings, led by the therapists who write it.

Some schools want a voice in the room as well as a library on the shelf. The therapists who write The Parent Book lead parent evenings on the themes your families are actually navigating, and brief pastoral staff at the start of a term. These are arranged term by term as a day-rate service; there is no annual commitment and no bundle to buy.

Safeguarding is furniture here, not a feature: every chapter closes with the same clinically maintained signposting block your DSL would want a parent to have, and nothing in the library replaces your school’s own procedures.

For parentsIf the library has helped you

The best introductions come from parents.

If a chapter here has been useful to you, the parents in your child’s year group are probably carrying versions of the same week. Schools listen to their own parents long before they listen to us, so one sentence from you in an email to your head of year opens a door that a cold approach never will.

What you are passing on costs the school nothing. The pastoral team reads the whole library free, and sends a chapter to a parent the way they would send anything else, as a link in an email they were already writing. There is nothing to buy, nothing to install, and nothing for a busy deputy head to administer.

You are welcome to write to them yourself, and to say we can be reached at hello@theparentbook.com. If you would rather we made the approach, leave us the name below and we will write one careful email. We will say a parent at the school suggested it, and we will not use your name unless you tell us we may.

Introduce your schoolTwo minutes, in your own words

Tell us who to write to.

Parents introduce their school; deputy heads introduce themselves. Fill in what you know and leave the rest blank, a school name on its own is enough. We write one careful email to the right person, we do not name you unless you have said we may, and nothing further happens unless the school wants it to.

We reply personally, usually within two working days.

The Parent Book is written by qualified therapists registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy BACP and the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society NCPS.

If you need help right now Tap for helplines
If you need help right now
If you or your child is in immediate danger999 · Call 999 · Go to your nearest A&E · 24/7
If you, or your child, is in mental health crisisNHS 111 · England, Scotland and Wales: call 111 and choose the mental-health option. Northern Ireland: call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000 · 24/7
If your child or young person is having thoughts of suicidePapyrus HopeLine 24/7 · 0300 102 2470 · text HOPE to 88247 · 24/7, every day · pat@papyrus-uk.org · Text and email replies may take up to 24 hours.
If your child needs to talk to someone themselvesChildline · 0800 1111 · 24/7
If you are worried that a child is being harmed or is at riskNSPCC Helpline · 0808 800 5000 · Mon-Fri 10am-4pm by phone; email 11am-4pm, seven days a week. An email sent when the service is closed is not received. · help@nspcc.org.uk · If the NSPCC service is closed and the concern cannot wait, call the police on 101. You can also contact the child’s local out-of-hours children’s social care, social work or social services team. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.
If you would prefer to text rather than speakShout · Text SHOUT to 85258 · 24/7
If you are struggling yourself and need to talkSamaritans · 116 123 · 24/7