About Parental Minds
We provide a lifeline for caregivers – parents, family members, friends, or colleagues (18+) – supporting someone of any age who is struggling with their mental health or emotional wellbeing. Whether you’re caring for a child, partner, friend or colleague – we walk alongside you 💜
We provide a safety net of support, hope, practical guidance and a listening ear for as long as you find it helpful. Our robust guidance is developed through families’ experiences, with insights from professionals and researchers. Our co-produced support guides are used to develop skills workshops for those who support others’ emotional wellbeing.
Our Story
Parental Minds was founded by Sarah-Lou, a parent who found herself supporting loved ones through some of life’s toughest challenges and feeling completely alone in the process.
She set out to build the service she wished had existed: one that recognises the emotional toll on caregivers and offers a calm, compassionate space to breathe, connect and grow.
“When someone you love is struggling, everything else fades. Parental Minds was created so no caregiver has to feel that alone again.”
– Sarah-Lou, Founder
Today, Parental Minds supports over a thousand caregivers across Devon and beyond.
Listen to our founder, Sarah-Lou, talk about her journey.
What We Do
At Parental Minds, we’re passionate about collaboration and working alongside caregivers, professionals and services. Everything we offer is shaped by our core principles – creating a safety net of support, fostering hope, offering acceptance, building compassionate connection, and always respecting choice.
We support individuals, upskill those working around them, and co-create better systems so that families feel heard, supported, and never alone.
We focus on three core areas:
1. Support
Drop-in hubs, one-to-one calls, mentoring and affordable counselling – all grounded in lived experience and compassion.
2. Development
Workshops and co-produced resources that build confidence and emotional resilience for caregivers and professionals alike.
3. System Change
We work in partnership with services, schools, and researchers to ensure caregiver voices shape more responsive, compassionate systems of support.
Parental Minds Resources
Parental Minds Resources are developed through lived experience with professional input and the voices of family members.
Parental Minds resources are the foundations of the support we deliver through Parental Minds Support Hub. Each resource is the result of a question being asked to Parental Minds or through Parental Minds Support Hub.
- How can I support them today? Ideas to try when things are difficult
- How can I cope today? Helping remind you to take care of yourself
- How can we move forward? Planning & improving mental well-being
- How do mental health services work? Navigation through the services
- How do others cope? Blogs from others with lived experience
These resources are very well thought through and the language is accessible and non-stigmatising. They provide a framework for carers and supporters who will hopefully find they can practice the suggestions so that in time they become more skilled in remaining grounded and calm and less emotional/confrontational when dealing with an overwhelmed person.
Dr D Starley
See our links section for further information on Helplines, Mental Health Conditions & Education.
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Parental Minds Counselling
Parental Minds Counselling is available to all Parents/Carers and those aged 16-25.
Our main catchment area is Honiton, Sidmouth, Seaton, Ottery St Mary & Axminster.
- Weekly Sessions
- Face to face, telephone or virtual
- We ask for a weekly donation that is affordable, to be agreed in advance
Get in touch to find out more.
Sharing Parental Voices
Sharing Parental Voices in the research and development of local and national services; with a particular interest in those who use risky behaviour to tolerate distress.
We share opportunities for you to share your own experience. Some Caregivers find it therapeutic to join ‘participation’ groups. We share these opportunities through our newsletters and social media. We also take themes from our Parental Minds Support members to local and national research projects.
Mental Health Support Networks
Parental Minds play an active role both nationally and locally; focussing on Parental Peer support and the mental wellbeing of young people.
See our links section for further information on our Network members.
How iBelong influenced Honiton’s Parental Minds service and our link with Ottery, Sidmouth, Axminster & Seaton.
Eating Disorder Support
We offer the Tastelife Eating Disorder Course. The course is for anyone who believes they have an eating disorder because issues around eating have taken over their life. You don’t have to have an ‘official’ diagnosis to come. It doesn’t matter what sort of eating disorder you have either – this course is for you. It is also open to parents, siblings, friends and carers of sufferers.
The aim of the course is to give you a toolkit of resources that you can use to start walking out of eating issues and back into enjoying life again, baby step by baby step. The tastelife course is not a cure or therapy, but it is a safe place where we can learn and grow together. Full recovery from eating disorders is possible! Tastelife have seen it and work with people who are either fully recovered or well on their way.
Parental Minds also holds New Maudsley Carer Skills Workshops for parents and carers of a loved one with an eating disorder, based in the Southwest of England. The sessions are led by Sara Newton, a compassionate lived experience carer.