Help the Parent, Help the Child
“If we value our children, we must cherish their parents” John Bowlby
A crisis in children’s mental health
Children are facing a growing mental health crisis:
- 1 in 5 children and young people now have a probable mental health disorder.
- Children from the poorest households are 4 times more likely to experience serious mental health difficulties than those from the wealthiest households.
- Research shows that children are significantly more likely to be affected when their parents struggle with their own mental health.
However, the role of parents is often overlooked. A parent’s own childhood experiences, together with the pressures of adult life, can make it very difficult to provide the stable, nurturing environment that children need to thrive. By supporting parents, we can strengthen families, improve children’s wellbeing and help prevent serious mental health problems from taking hold.
How we help
At Flourish, we believe that struggling parents should be supported, not sidelined: they are usually the key to creating lasting change for their children. That is why Flourish has developed a counselling-based service that helps parents address the challenges they face, while building stronger family relationships and more stable home environments.
Our approach is:
Holistic – looking at the whole family system and helping the parent to help the child.
Contextual – recognising how life experiences, relationships and circumstances shape emotional wellbeing.
Focused on causes – exploring and understanding the contributing underlying factors
Integrated – combining counselling with advocacy, coaching and practical problem-solving.
Flexible – overcoming the barriers that can prevent highly-challenged parents from accessing support.
Making a difference
Working with our partners, the Moat Foundation and Homestart, we have established a community-focussed counselling service which also offers advocacy, coaching and practical problem-solving, according to each family’s need.
We accept referrals from local schools and our partner organisations. Increasingly, families come to us through recommendations from former clients, reflecting the trust the service has built in the community and the normalisation of talking about mental health.
Since launching in Stanhope, Ashford in 2025, the project has supported nearly 40 families. Feedback from parents has been overwhelmingly positive, while schools and referral partners report significant improvements for both parents and their children.
