Responding to the children

Many children have, or had, parents who experienced mental health difficulties, and this can present significant challenges.

Knowing how to respond to children who have witnessed and experienced the effects of parents’ mental health problems can also be quite challenging for professionals and community members in many different contexts.

The Dulwich Centre Foundation is currently developing ways of responding to the children of parents with mental health difficulties, and has collected stories in order to develop a resource to support workers in this area.

This resource will be of value to:

• teachers who are working with children whose parents have mental health difficulties

• counsellors, psychologists, family therapists, doctors, and youth workers who are responding to families where a parent struggles with mental health concerns

• other community members and workers, who may have some kind of pastoral, mentoring, or care-giving role, such as sports coaches, Scouts or Guides leaders and other recreational coordinators, and foster parents.

A web-based resource for young people

We are also developing an interactive web-based resource which will be accessible to young people whose parents are struggling with mental health difficulties.

Through a moderated, safe, web-based forum, we will provide ways for children and young people to provide meaningful responses to others who are dealing with similar issues, and find ways that the knowledge of both children and adults can be helpfully shared across the generations.