Growing Together is a service that helps families with their mental health and well-being.
Growing Together works with the adults and children (aged 1-5) in a family to support their mental health and wellbeing. This support might be for problems with emotions, behaviours and or relationships. We welcome referrals and self-referrals from families from diverse backgrounds, cultures and non-heteronormative families.
How you may be feeling: Stressed out and overwhelmed, tearful and upset or anxious.
What we do: We can work with you in different ways, and sometimes a combination of these works best:
- Parental mental health interventions:
We can offer therapies to tackle common adult mental health issues like depression and anxiety, including CBT and other therapies. Therapy often involves understanding how the past influences you, as well as developing ideas for things you can do differently in the here-and-now. We offer a range of interventions and tailor the support we offer to each individual family.
- Integrated Family Work:
We can work with parents to understand what might be causing or keeping a problem going. When we understand the problem better, we can think together to work out some solutions. This might involve changes in routines, rules, or strategies. We always work with parents to find solutions that fit their family’s needs
- Family Therapy:
This therapy is based on the idea that the way people interact with others, influences the way individuals think, act and feels about themselves and their difficulties. It focuses on relationships and ways that people in families interact in the present, and how this might be influenced by the family’s experiences, history and surroundings.
In Family Therapy we use talking and other ways of communicating. We may ask you to think about inviting a range of different people from the family to attend.
Family Therapy helps people in close relationships to:
- think about how to help each other
- express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely
- understand each other’s experiences and views
- build on strengths in their relationship
- make changes in their relationships and lives.
Find out more from the Association for Family Therapy.
- Parent-Infant Psychotherapy:
We work with parents and children to help them communicate better and enjoy each other. The therapist helps parents to think about their child’s play, emotions and behaviour. Parents also have opportunities to reflect on their own experience of being a child and how they would like to care for and set limits for their child.
- MindSkills:
This course aims to help parents who feel low in mood, anxious, stressed or lacking in confidence. Being a parent can be tough so it offers you a chance to learn more about worry and low mood and learn different ways of handling these times.
The course is based on cognitive behavioural principles, which have been researched and found to be effective in helping with these problems.
The course is practical and the aim is to help you to develop skills to use in your day to day life. For that reason, it includes exercises to do during each session and between sessions, as well as helpful summary hand outs that you can keep.
- Mellow Parenting workshops:
We run Mellow Parenting groups for mums who would like support with the challenges of parenting. It’s a day-long group in which group members share with each other their ideas and experiences, while their children attend a crèche. In the morning, mums are given a space to think about their own experiences, both past and present.
At lunchtime the mums, children and group facilitators all eat together and take part in a fun activity with the children. In the afternoon we think about parenting and how to understand and manage children’s behaviour.
Videos of group members with their child are used to help promote discussion about parenting challenges, and to receive advice and support from the group. Click here for more information.
- Growing Together Workshops:
The Growing Together team offers various workshops. These workshops are offered in the form of one-off sessions which aim to provide help to parents in common areas that they may be struggling with.
The Calmer Nights Sleep Workshop explores ways to improve both parents’ and children’s sleep and offers support to help parents feel more confident about their family’s routine.
The Mindfulness & Parenting workshop explores how mindfulness can help bring some calm to family life. The workshop aims to help parents to focus their attention on the present moment while parenting.
No referral is needed to join these workshops, if you are interested in joining one of our workshops you can sign up on our Eventbrite page . Please note that you can only register 4-6 weeks prior the workshop. Our courses are popular so Please let us know if you cannot attend as spaces fill up quickly.
Where would I see someone?
We work with families in various community locations in Islington, like children’s centres or health centres.
How can I see the Growing Together team?
If you think that Growing Together could help your family, then please speak with your health visitor, GP, or someone from your local Children’s Centre, nursery or school. They can talk to you about what support you would like and contact Growing Together for you.
Self-refer, by calling iCope on 0303 123 1000. One of the therapists from Growing Together will then telephone you to arrange a meeting.
We are a partnership between
iCope, Adult Mental Health Service (Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health services (Whittington Health NHS Trust) and information is shared between the two NHS Trusts.
How can I get involved?
We want parents to be involved in Growing Together in as many different ways as possible – in fact the parents from the Growing Together group helped us choose our name and service logo.
If you have any ideas or would like to suggest ways we can improve our service, we would love to hear from you. Call us on 0203 316 1824 or email growingtogether@nhs.net to get involved.
