Parenting doesn’t stop: Insights from Parent Talk 2025/26

Our digital parenting support service, Parent Talk, supports an increasing number of parents of adolescents as they experience changes in their children's mental health, school, SEND, behaviour and family relationships. And, a rising number of parents are worried about their own mental health and wellbeing, affecting their ability to parent with confidence.

Parent Talk is our free online advice and information service for parents of children aged 0-19 (or up to 25 for children with additional needs). It mixes trusted online guidance with confidential one-to-one support from experienced parenting coaches. Between April 2025 and March 2026, over 330,000 parents and carers accessed Parent Talk’s online advice, with nearly 4,000 parents receiving one-to-one support from Parent Talk coaches.

For this year's report we analysed four years of data from one-to-one chats with Parent Talk practitioners. We found that parents’ own wellbeing has become an increasingly visible part of the support that families need, and this has risen particularly sharply for parents of adolescents.

Between August 2025 and July 2026, concerns about parents’ or carers’ own wellbeing or mental health were recorded in 40% of cases involving a child aged 10-15. This compares with 24% three years earlier. Where parental wellbeing was a concern, 82% of cases also included a concern about a child’s wellbeing.

Early adolescence, from ages 10-15, is a period of major cognitive, emotional and social development. Children want more independence, develop new peer relationships, spend more time online, move into more complex school environments and begin to think about the future.

At the same time, parents are having to adapt to these changes, often without the community or professional support that may have been more visible when children were younger.

This period in children’s lives, particularly around secondary school transition, is often when emerging needs become more visible or begin to escalate. Yet early help has becoming increasingly difficult to access. In 2024/25, 82% of local authority children’s services spending in England was directed towards late intervention.

Our report finds that:

• Parents of adolescents are an overlooked part of the early help system. Families can find themselves falling between the whole-family support provided in the early years and youth services designed to work directly with young people. Many remain below statutory thresholds or are left waiting while difficulties worsen.
• Parents’ own wellbeing is a substantial part of the support need. Parents are not only asking what to do for their child; they are often asking for help to keep going themselves. Coaching support to parents frequently focuses on exhaustion, strained relationships and how to parent when on the edge of burnout.
• Families’ needs are complex and interdependent. School absence, mental health, SEND, behaviour, family relationships, financial pressure and safeguarding concerns rarely occur in isolation. Secondary school transition is a particularly important pressure point.
• Digital support can provide containment, clarity and a practical next step. Parent Talk gives parents a flexible and non-judgemental place to explain the whole situation, receive tailored guidance and identify a manageable way forward.

This age group sits at the intersection of many of the government's priorities for children and families, including school attendance, mental health, SEND, safeguarding, youth violence and family support.

The government’s focus on families in the early years, through its Best Start in Life Family Hubs, is welcome; we now need the same level of commitment to increase support for older children and their parents.

1. Establish a national ambition for adolescence, including an ambition for secondary school readiness at age 11 and an outcome framework covering family wellbeing, parental confidence, emotional wellbeing, attendance, belonging and successful transitions.
2. Make support for parents of children aged 10 to 15 part of every local family support offer, including through Family Hubs, schools, youth services, digital provision, voluntary organisations and Family Help.
3. Design support around the realities of adolescence and key transition points, including secondary school transition, school absence, SEND assessment, referrals to mental health services, family separation, online risk and safeguarding concerns.
4. Provide practical and emotional support while children and families wait for specialist help. The current system of “refer and wait” is not good enough.
5. Recognise digital parenting support as part of early help infrastructure, complementing face-to-face and specialist services with fast, flexible and parent-led help.