Parenting support

If you're worried about your child or young person’s mental health and well-being, we can help you to support them and build their resilience

Our parents and carers service aims to increase your knowledge and awareness of mental health and boost your confidence in coping with and addressing your child or young person’s mental health.

Whether they are suffering from anxiety, depression, stress, disordered eating or emotionally-based school avoidance, our peer support service can help you support your young person – and in doing so help improve your own well-being by meeting and sharing with other parents and carers.

The service includes online and in-person peer support meetings, where you can discuss your concerns, build strategies to help you support your child and meet other parents and carers. All meetings are hosted and mediated by a member of staff from West Sussex Mind. These peer support groups take place both during the day (online and in-person) and in the evenings (online only). Click the button below for venues and dates for our parenting peer support drop-ins.

Teen boy with swept hair across face with sunlight to wall

What else we offer

In addition to our peer support groups, we support parents and carers of school-age children (five to 18 years) across West Sussex by providing:

  • Talks by 'Experts by Experience' on specific topics (evenings), such as self-harm, school avoidance and autism and mental health
  • One-to-one sessions with a peer support worker
  • A closed Facebook group
  • Signposting to other services as appropriate
  • A range of free parent and carer webinars on different topics
  • Free e-learning courses on topics, such as disordered eating, self-harm and LGBTQ+ awareness.

If you're interested in our parenting support or would like to speak to someone in our parenting team, please contact our Help Point on 0300 303 5652 (Mon to Fri, 10am to 4pm) or email helppoint@westsussexmind.org. You can also complete our support request form below. We aim to get back to you within two weeks of receiving this form.

Support request form

In this section