- Relationship Advice
We offer the following range of interventions and programmes to support parental couples in order that the impact of inter-parental conflict on their children can be minimised.
Part of the DWP's Reducing Parental Conflict programme, Building Relationships for Stronger Families is a free programme delivered to address stress and conflict in relationships where those elements are affecting family life.
The programme offers parents, both together and separated, free support via a helpful course of sessions (selected to suit circumstances) to address conflict within the relationship and strengthen parenting skills.
The offer is delivered via local authorities in areas of London and the counties to the North of Greater London.
A review of research, conducted in 2016 by the Early Intervention Foundation, concluded that parents/couples who engage in frequent, intense, and poorly resolved interparental conflicts put children’s mental health and long-term life chances at risk.
These findings are in keeping with our clinical experience gathered over more than 70 years of working with parental couples in the context of relationship distress.
This programme helps couples experiencing relationship difficulties and high levels of inter-parental conflict. Our approach draws on the original work carried out by Professors Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman on mentalization as a way of helping individuals.
This programme worked with separated parents who were in entrenched conflict, for whom repeated court intervention had been unsuccessful in resolving conflict or improving their capacity to co-parent effectively.
The Department for Education, and other organisations, have commissioned Tavistock Relationships to develop and deliver training workshops to organisations and staff working in children's and family settings.
This is a Relationship Awareness one-day training for professionals working in Children and Family Services. The course is designed to help those involved in working with children and families to think about relationship issues in relation to their work.
Half-day and full-day workshops for primary and secondary school teachers, educational support staff and counsellors which are about recognising and managing signs of inter-parental conflict.
This evidence-based training provides an introduction to thinking about the couple/parental relationship for students and partially or fully qualified Health Visitors.
With nearly three quarters of the people coming to us for support wih their relationships identifiable as clinically depressed, mental health, the effects and treatment are central to our work and thinking.
Our training, intervention and support materials include:
Adopting a child can place very significant stress on the relationship between the parental couple.
Adoptive couples are very likely to experience additional strains on their relationship. For example, prior to the adoption they may have had difficulties in conceiving or issues around infertility and how these are negotiated and managed can be stressful for the couple. Added to this are the challenges of the adoption application process and the attendant frustrations involved in what can be a lengthy and emotionally draining experience.
In addition, the adopted children themselves often have traumatic or troubled histories – which can present considerable emotional challenges to the adoptive parental relationship, which then affect the couple’s capacity to provide effective, containing parenting to the child.
Tavistock Relationships has developed a bespoke service to help adoptive couples who are encountering difficulties in their relationship. Read about it here:
As with any transition, the move from the world of work to one of retirement can have a significant impact, positively and negatively, on a couple's relationship.
Tavistock Relationships has developed a brief intervention for couples which aims to provide them with the resources and thinking space to face the changes emerging from a future together.
Read more about the intervention here:
Couple 50+ MOT