Parent and Carer Consultation

When parents and carers seek psychological help for their children, many are themselves feeling impacted by what is happening in various ways and/or can face dilemmas about how best to respond. Parenting confidence can really suffer when you feel stuck or “out of ideas”.

Consultations can be offered to parents and carers to discuss these concerns and strategies to help, and tend to take two formats:

• Whole sessions reserved for one or more parent(s)/carer(s)

• Brief feedback consultation with parent(s)/carer(s) at the end of a session with a child or young person. This sometimes requires a longer overall session, see “How long are sessions and what do they cost?” in FAQs).

Do parents/carers always meet together in consultations?

Not always - this is very much dependent on need, circumstances and preferences, and you should not feel any pressure to meet jointly if you do not feel safe.

When parents/carers are working as a team, many find it helpful to have some joint sessions together to understand each other’s perspectives and align approaches. But it’s also common for parents to have some consultation sessions on their own to speak in more detail about their individual perspective and concerns as a parent/carer.