Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant and Laura Reitsis, Safeguarding around dogs. Keeping children safe around dogs outdoors isn’t about avoiding dogs or teaching children to be afraid of them. Instead, it’s about helping adults and children understand how to interact safely and respectfully so that everyone can enjoy shared spaces.

By Grace Olson, Author. Scheduling self-care is vital if we are to be capable of performing well as a parent, and looking back at my early experiences of parenting, it really was a ‘performance’. As a parent you have to keep your feelings in check and you have to demonstrate the type of behaviour you want from your children even if your emotions are exploding within you.

So how can we do this? How can we schedule any sort of self-care into our busy lives? Well, the easiest way is to allow yourself some time each day to read a book. This year (2026) the government has launched an initiative called The National Year of Reading. They want to encourage the nation to read more physical books because it has become clear that scrolling through social media and reading electronically is harming our brains. It disrupts sleep, increases anxiety, reduces attention span and can lower self-esteem as we look at the ‘perfect’ lives and success of other people (which are often fake).

Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant.  Early waking is a very common challenge for families, especially as mornings start to get lighter. For many babies and young children, this can signal that it’s time to start the day.

Some children, however, wake early all year round, and this can become an established pattern that feels difficult to change.

Written by Hannah. Sometimes I drive past the hospital where my first daughter was born, and I shudder. The experience was awful. The birth was traumatic. The care felt neglectful. Birth trauma is something I lived through and for a period of my life, it consumed me. It was exhausting. I was anxious and irritable. I became flaky with friends. Large groups of people felt overwhelming. I withdrew from relationships and developed separation anxiety from both my husband and my daughter. I poured every bit of energy I had into my daughter and into trying to be a good mother.