For schoolsFree for school staff
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, on things like a friendship that has ended, evenings that have stopped working, or a worry that has started to make decisions for a child. Schools often hear about these before anyone else. The teachers’ shelf lets your pastoral team send a parent a chapter on the thing the parent has just told them about.
There is no licence, no fee and no partnership to sign.
To use it today
Sign in with your school address.
We email you a link, and the whole library opens. There is nothing for the school to set up.
Sign in to the shelf →Before anyone sends anything
See what a parent receives.
Read it as a parent would, on your phone if you like, and judge the tone for yourself. You do not need to sign in.
Open the example →How it worksThree steps
Your pastoral team reads the library, free.
That means heads of year, form tutors, the school counsellor, or whoever else holds pastoral care. They see the whole library, and there are no accounts for the school to manage.
A staff member sends a chapter to the parent who needs it.
It is a link, pasted into an email the tutor was already writing. There is no portal and no training day, and nothing is asked of staff beyond the conversation they were having anyway.
The parent reads that chapter in full, free, without signing up.
At the end, a short note says the chapter comes from a library written by therapists, and how the parent can read the rest if they would like to. Whether they subscribe is up to them.
The film in words
On screen: The navy cloth cover of The Parent Book, with its gold mark.
Parents bring their worries to school.
On screen: The cover lifts, and three cards are laid on the paper, each a subject from the library with its drawing: School stress, a stack of exercise books; Separation and divorce, two small houses; Screen time, a phone.
A stomach ache every Sunday night. A separation at home. A teenager on his phone until two.
On screen: The cards are taken away, and the teachers’ shelf is laid in their place, headed For school staff, Free to use.
You want to help, and you want to get it right. And the bell goes in five minutes.
On screen: Free to use is underlined in gold, then the shelf’s first words: Everything on this shelf is written or chosen by therapists, for parents.
The teachers’ shelf, from The Parent Book, is free for school staff. Everything on it is written or chosen by qualified therapists, for parents.
On screen: Won’t go to school is typed into the search, under the question What is the family facing? As it is typed, the common concerns fold away. The results come up under the box, 146 things across 12 kinds, and first among them the pack, School stress: what helps, beside its drawing.
Type what the parent told you, the way you’d say it.
On screen: The pack is lifted from the results with its buttons, Send, Preview and Add to a set, and its line is underlined: what to do first, what helps, what to try, and who else can help with school stress. A guide a parent can print or keep.
Start with the pack: what to do first, what helps, and who else can help.
On screen: Send is pressed, and the box for sending it opens. The teacher leaves the parent’s first name blank, since it is optional, and types a line of her own: Good to talk this morning. I thought this might help. Beside it, What the parent sees shows the same line at the top of the page, letter by letter. Under her line, the shelf asks her to write nothing about the child.
Press Send, and add a line from you, if you’d like. You’ll see exactly how it will read.
On screen: Copy the link is pressed, and reads Copied. Beside it are Email it and Copy a message.
Then copy the link, or a message that’s ready to go, into whatever you use to write to parents.
On screen: The page the parent opens, as her phone shows it: Passed on by a member of staff at your school, with the teacher’s line beneath it, then Written by the therapists at Kensington Square Therapy. Free to read in full, with nothing to sign up to.
The page she opens says it came from her child’s school. And it’s free for her to read in full, with nothing to sign up to.
On screen: The page turns to its night colours, and moves down to What to do first.
She can read it tonight, when the house is quiet, and come back to it whenever she needs.
On screen: Its first step is underlined: Take the physical symptoms seriously. The Sunday stomach ache is real.
And you didn’t have to write the advice yourself, or wonder whether it was right.
On screen: Back on the shelf, every subject is opened, in its groups, and then the age is set to Secondary. Then Worth having ready, this half-term’s three, chosen by the therapists who write the library: Transitions, Friendships and Anxiety, each with its drawing.
When you’ve got longer, browse every subject, by age. Or take what our therapists would have ready this half-term, and put it in the newsletter.
On screen: At the top of the shelf, Ask a therapist is pressed, and the shelf goes to When a page is not enough, three ways to ask the therapists at Kensington Square Therapy: Ask for a page; Talk it through with a therapist, a call by telephone or video; and Supervision for you or your team, arranged with your school, and invoiced to the school. A therapist replies within two working days.
And when a page isn’t enough, ask us. For a page the shelf doesn’t have yet. For a call, to think something through. Or for supervision, for you or your team, arranged with your school. A therapist replies within two working days.
On screen: Talk it through with a therapist is opened. Under its form is the note that it is not for an emergency and not a safeguarding referral, and these words in it are underlined: follow your school’s safeguarding procedures and speak to your designated safeguarding lead today. The note ends with a link, If someone is in danger now. The form is closed again.
None of this replaces your school’s safeguarding procedures. It sits alongside them.
On screen: Pass it on: Anyone else here can use this too. Under Tell a colleague, its first line is underlined: The shelf is free for every member of staff with a school email address. Then Copy a note for a colleague is pressed. Beside it is the half-term note.
The shelf is free for every member of staff with a school email address. So find one thing that helps. Send it to a parent. And tell a colleague, here or at another school.
On screen: The navy cover returns, and gold is laid into its mark: The Parent Book. The teachers’ shelf, free for school staff, at theparentbook.com/staff.
Sign in with your school address and use it today. There is nothing to arrange first.
Before you decideFor the head, the DSL and the bursar
The questions a head, a designated safeguarding lead or a bursar will ask, each answered on a page of its own.
- The library, for your parent communityWhat it is, what your school can use, what it asks of your staff, and what it costs.
- What we hold, and what we do notThe data we hold about children, parents and staff, how the signposting is governed, and what the library is not.
- A page for form tutorsHow to send a parent something useful in half a minute, and what not to write in it.
- The note to send your parent communityWording for a newsletter, a letter or a portal tile, to use as it stands.
- What a parent receivesThe anxiety pack, exactly as a parent opens it when a member of staff sends it. You can read it without signing in.
Beyond the shelfWhen a school wants more
Evenings and briefings, led by the therapists who write it.
Some schools also want a therapist in the room. The therapists who write The Parent Book lead parent evenings on the subjects your families are dealing with, and brief pastoral staff at the start of a term. These are arranged term by term, at a day rate, with no annual commitment.
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.
Talk to usFor the head, the deputy head and the DSL
If you would like to talk first.
About the shelf before anyone uses it, an evening for your parents, or a briefing for your staff. Leave your details and we will write back personally, or write to hello@theparentbook.com.
Thank you. It has arrived, and we will write back 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 are a parentThe library at your child’s school
If the library has helped you and you would like your child’s school to have it, introduce your school. It takes two minutes, and it costs the school nothing.