Concerned about your child’s mental health?

Discover vital knowledge and skills through this Parent Toolkit.
Produced ‘by parents for parents’ in collaboration with clinical experts from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and King’s College London.

Funded by InnovateUK (the UK government's innovation agency).

  • Over 100 videos featuring clinical experts and families with lived-experience.

  • Downloadable 'Reflection Guides' for each video to help you apply the knowledge and skills to your particular situation.

  • Peer-support through online discussion with other parents.

  • HeadwayLIVE zoom events for you to ask specific questions of the presenters.

  • Immediate access to all our additional new tools to support Family-based Self-help as we release them.

Developed in collaboration with...

"Maudsley Learning’s mission is to improve mental health for all through delivering high quality training and development based on the world-leading expertise at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. We are delighted to contribute our expertise to this exciting project by Family Mental Wealth, to help improve the lives of children and young people through supporting their families with vital knowledge and skills."  
Dr Sean Cross. Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist & Managing Director, Maudsley Learning, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. 

"We are delighted to have been able to support this Family Mental Wealth project through the Digital Health Technology Catalyst. This highly innovative project, bringing together expertise from clinicians and researchers alongside families with lived experience, is a perfect example of how collaboration with the right partners can make a real impact."   
Chris Sawyer. Digital Health Innovation Lead, Innovate UK. 

This Parent Toolkit covers...

  1. What every parent needs to know.
    Set in the context of the inspirational stories of young people's recovery from mental ill-health, this part provides an overview of how Family-based Self-help can enable children to develop mentally healthy lives. It introduces parents to vital knowledge and skills which can enable them to develop protective factors to reduce the risk of mental ill-health, respond effectively to the early signs of mental ill-health, and help their child's journey of recovery to a mentally healthy life.
  2. Understanding mental health and treatment.
    This part helps parents to understand the nature of mental health and the twelve most common forms of Anxiety, Depression and Eating Disorders. It enables parents to understand the different types of treatment for mental ill-health, and the effective role of Family-based Self-help in building a mentally healthy life.
  3. Turning risk into resilience.
    This part covers nine of the most common risk factors which can predispose, precipitate, and perpetuate mental ill-health in children. It enables parents to understand how they might help their child to develop protective factors that can reduce each of those risk factors, and thus to build mentally healthy lives.
  4. Spotting the signs.
    This part helps parents to spot fifteen of the most common early signs of Anxiety, Depression and Eating Disorders. It enables parents to understand how they might respond appropriately through Family-based Self-help and how to engage effectively with health professionals.
  5. Crafting the care.
    This part helps parents to understand and utilise eleven key skills, drawn from the New Maudsley Method for Skills-based Caring, to support the recovery of their child, appropriately integrated with whatever professional treatment is available.

We seek to serve all types of parents and families...

There are many different types of families (e.g. birth, blended, fostered, adopted, extended etc.) and for some people their network of friends is ‘family’ to them (indeed people talk of the ‘scouting family’ or ‘church family’ or ‘military family’). We seek to serve families in the broadest possible sense… any group of people (whether genetically related or not) who self-identify as members of a group who share their lives together in some meaningful way. Similarly, there are many different people with parenting roles. We seek to serve parents in the broadest possible sense… any person within a family who self-identifies as providing some form of parental role for a child or young person.