Children and young people
Children and young people
Understanding the processes and options regarding your children is one of the most challenging parts of a separation. The resources below are aimed at helping you support your children, whatever their age, through this.
Getting started
Guide for separated parents: children and the family courts (CB7) — official guidance from HM Courts and Tribunals Service, covering what happens if arrangements for children go to court.
Top Tips for Separating Parents — written by the Family Justice Young People's Board, made up of young people with direct experience of family court proceedings. Colourful, direct, and based on what children say they actually want their parents to remember.
Read the Top Tips on the Cafcass website
Supporting Children Through Divorce and Separation — a Cafcass resource hub for parents on co-operative parenting, communication and reducing conflict after separation.
Read the Cafcass parent resource hub
The Separated Parents Information Programme (SPIPS)
Many people going through a court process are referred to SPIPS, a programme designed to help parents understand how separation affects children, and how to communicate with them during it. You do not need to wait for a court referral. You can attend voluntarily.
Why conflict matters
Research consistently shows that children are affected less by separation itself, and more by how parents express and manage conflict, across a spectrum from silence to open hostility. Evidence shows children's emotional, behavioural, social and academic outcomes, and their future relationships, are affected by conflict between parents or carers, regardless of whether the adults were ever married, are separated, or are the child's biological parents.
Interparental conflict and youth psychopathology: an evidence review and practice-focused update
Talking to teenagers
How to talk to your teenager about divorce and separation — written for parents of 15 to 18 year olds, with input from young people who have been through it themselves.
If your child needs someone to talk to
Childline
Helpline: 0800 1111
Hours: 24 hours a day, every day
Free, confidential support for children and young people themselves.
YoungMinds Parents Helpline
Helpline: 0808 802 5544
Hours: Monday, Thursday and Friday 9.30am to 4pm; Tuesday and Wednesday 9.30am to 6pm
Free advice for parents worried about a child or teenager's mental health.
Practical tools
The Handover Book — a simple communication book for separated families, designed to reduce disagreements between parents who no longer live together. It helps both parents stay aware of what is happening in their children's busy lives, and includes a section for children to fill in themselves.
The Divorce Journal for Children (Sue Atkins) — a journal designed to help children express, explore and understand the strong emotions they may feel, and to process the divorce in their own way.
A divorce or separation can be a difficult time for the whole family. Although you are no longer together, you are still parents, and it matters that you put your differences aside where you can, so your children can grow up feeling happy, confident and secure, despite living apart.
If you'd like to talk any of this through, contact us on 01603 620588, or ask your mediator.