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Our work is grounded in research, practice and lived experience. Our founder's doctoral research explores how professionals understand children's experiences when a parent is struggling with their mental health.
Doctoral research
What do professionals really see?
Natasha's doctoral research explores how practitioners make sense of children's experiences where parental mental health is a concern.
The research asks not only what professionals know, but how they arrive at their understanding, what influences their interpretations, and what may be overlooked along the way. It includes how professional assumptions about race, gender and childhood may shape what practitioners see.
ProgrammeProfessional Doctorate in Social Work and Social Care
InstitutionTavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, with the University of Essex
“
I often wonder how differently children like me might have experienced those years if the adults and services around us had better understood what we were living through.
Natasha Manning, Founder and Director
A series by Natasha Manning
Five parental mental health studies you should know
Each study shapes how we think about children, parents and the professionals around them. Choose a study to read the finding and Natasha's reflection.
Riebschleger, 2004
Good days and bad days
A study of 22 children aged 5 to 17 who had a parent experiencing psychiatric difficulties. Children described the difference between their parent's good days and bad days: more attention on good days, worry about difficulties in the family, and limited information about their parent's mental health.
Why it matters: the children were not simply describing the impact of a diagnosis. They were describing their relationships, their worries and their everyday lives.
Simpson-Adkins and Daiches, 2018
How children make sense of a parent's mental health
A qualitative meta-synthesis bringing together 14 studies. Children do not necessarily understand parental mental illness through clinical explanations. Their understanding develops through observation, family relationships, the information available to them, and the explanations they construct themselves.
Why it matters: there is a difference between what children experience and what they believe those experiences mean. Children are active meaning makers, not passive observers.
Gladstone, Boydell and McKeever, 2006
Beyond risk and resilience
The authors question whether risk and resilience frameworks, with their focus on vulnerability, adaptation and developmental outcomes, properly account for children's own experiences and the wider social contexts they grow up in.
Why it matters: we can mistake a child's ability to function for evidence that their emotional needs are being met, especially when children seem articulate, independent and capable.
Maybery and Reupert, 2009
Barriers to working with whole families
A review of the barriers to working effectively with families where a parent experiences mental illness. It identified organisational structures, professional attitudes, limited knowledge of family-focused practice, and difficulties with interagency collaboration.
Why it matters: the barriers are not only about individual practitioners. They also concern how services are organised, what professionals are expected to prioritise, and how responsibility for the family is understood.
Bacon et al., 2023
At the edge of care
A systematic review and thematic synthesis of parents' and practitioners' experiences of children's social services where parental mental health was a concern. It found tensions between the support parents needed and the interventions they received. Organisational constraints, professional relationships and statutory involvement all shaped how families engaged, and in some cases involvement intended to support or safeguard children added to parental distress.
Why it matters: bringing parents' and practitioners' accounts together shows the importance of recognising different perspectives, rather than relying on a single professional account.
From research to practice
How this shapes our work
I
Children as meaning makers
We help parents think about how their children may be making sense of what is happening at home, not only what they have seen.
II
Repair, not perfection
Our sessions support parents to reconnect after hard moments, so children feel safer and more understood.
III
Curious professionals
Our training helps practitioners look beyond symptoms and risk, and stay curious about the child's own experience.
Talks, training and collaboration
Bring this research into your service
Natasha speaks and trains on parental mental health, children's experiences and trauma-informed practice.
