Below you can hear feedback from parents helped by our support programme.

Parents across many cultural backgrounds have received specialist support as part of the goverrnment-funded programme
Building Relationships for Stronger Families, delivered by Tavistock Relationships and partners across several English local authorities.

Here are words shared with us by parents which describe how the support has helped their relationship with a partner or
ex-partner/co-parent in working through their relationship difficulties in order to improve their parenting.

Parent Quotation 1

Click on one of the buttons below to hear the full quotation in that language. (Audio opens in new tab)

Parent Quotation 2

Click on one of the buttons below to hear the full quotation in that language. (Audio opens in new tab)

How to join the programme

This funded programme runs in London in Westminster, Brent, Croydon, Camden, Lambeth, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham.
It also is available in Buckinghamshire CC, Cambridgeshire CC, Essex CC, Hertfordshire CC, Peterborough CC and Southend CC.

If you live, or access services, in London within the boroughs of Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Camden, Hammersmith &
Fulham, Croydon, Brent and Lambeth, you could access this FREE help,

You can read more on our main page.

Do you feel stress and conflict in your relationships is affecting your family? Our FREE parenting programme offers support to suit your circumstances, address conflict within your relationship as well as strengthening your parenting skills.

Watch our video to learn how this programme can help: 

Please note all sessions take place remotely.

What is it all about?

Being a parent can be challenging – but when your relationship with your partner, or your ex-partner, isn’t going well it’s even tougher.

• There are times when we are all under stress but while conflict is part of family life for everyone, sometimes difficulties between parents – whether they are living together or have separated - can get in the way of being able to manage life at your best.
• If you are experiencing conflict with your partner, or your ex-partner, there may be a lack of warmth or emotional connection between you, or rows and arguments that get stuck or become out of control; you might find that these happen often and are hard to sort out by yourselves.
• Whether together or separated, how we interact with each other as parents have a big impact on our children.
• Research shows us that conflict between parents can have a negative effect on children’s development – on their mental and physical health, problems at school, sleep difficulties and the relationships they themselves make as they grow up.

For more information please visit our website. 

Voices of Parents as Partners 

Four stories from participants to our programme, talking about how Parents as Partners helped:

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(voices used are actors)

Exploring cross dressing, sexuality and how couples therapy can help.

Sexual identity – Transvestism and Relationships
Roya and Qadim’s Story

Roya had discovered Qadim’s interest in transvestism when she came home early one day and caught him in a dress and wig in their bedroom. She had initially been confused and upset by what she thought it meant about his loss of desire for her, having made the common mistake of equating transvestism with homosexuality.

After a discussion, Roya was more or less assured by Roya’s explanation that dressing in women’s clothes gave him a sense of peace and that it didn’t affect his sexual desire for her. It was agreed to ‘allow’ his cross dressing providing it was done entirely privately and not in front of her or the children.

Conflict arose between them when Qadim tried to engage her interest in what he wore and how he looked, and it exploded when he went out of the house wearing a dress. This was beyond Roya’s tolerance level, and she was furious that he had made public something that she could only just bear privately. She was convinced that he had done it to attack her, and that his aim was to humiliate and demean her in public. She left the house in a fury, telling him that she would only return when he had destroyed all his cross dress clothing. This plunged Qadim into a depression and he became unable to function.

Coming to Couples Therapy was the first step

The therapy helped Qadim to see the degree to which his cross dressing was unconsciously motivated by an identification with his younger sister, who had been favoured by his mother when growing up. It wasn’t so much he wanted to be her, rather he wanted the experience that she had: to be the centre of his mother’s adoration and praise. Through cross-dressing he gained some of the affirmation he felt he had missed, but it felt unconnected to his current life.

His attempts to involve Roya in how he looked were efforts to persuade her to play the part of the besotted mother; going beyond the privacy of their home was an attempt to link his longing with his day-to-day life.

At the same time, he knew that Roya hated what he did, and could not have been surprised when his behaviour made her turn away from him, repeating the experience of his mother’s rejection.

Behaviour that attempted to both involve Roya and alienate her contained two different, conflicting messages. The first was: “Look at me, you love me, I want to make you feel good.” The second was: “Look at me, I hate you, I want to make you feel bad.”

When she compared her upbringing with Qadim’s, Roya was able to see that she too was bringing family of-origin experiences into their relationship. She had grown up with older brothers who teased and humiliated her, while here parents were too preoccupied with themselves to notice what was going on. She tried to avoid the persecution of her brothers, keeping her inner life of wishes and dreams hidden from them, but remembered a succession of incidents where she was put down and demeaned. In particular, she remembered getting ready for a first date when she was 17. She’d saved up and bought a new blouse and skirt that she was very happy with, feeling that it really expressed how she wanted to be seen. On the evening of the date, one of her brothers took her clothes and paraded around the house in them, pretending to be her, while the other brothers pretended to be her date. Their behaviour became more and more extreme, and Roya felt utterly shamed by their increasingly explicit sexual antics.

When they had finished, her new clothes were unwearable and she was too upset to go out for her date. The incident was something they continued to tease her about until she left home.
The image of Qadim in women’s clothing was too close to Roya’s nightmare of humiliation by her brothers for her to tolerate, something that had left her conflicted about her sexual and emotional longings toward men in general. The fury was of an old hurt, ambivalent feelings about depending on a man, sexual pain, and anxiety that Qadim might leave her.

How therapy helps when couples explore their feelings?

It took some time to tease all this out. Roya and Qadim found it very painful to explore their experience, and thought that much of it simply had to be put up with. The therapist had enquired sensitively about their sexual relationship over and above the issues of cross dressing, as there were clear hints that neither of them was satisfied with it. Qadim wanted to be the object of attention but pursued this in a way that ensured he wasn’t. Roya feared being the object of attention, as though expressing her wishes would be dangerous. Each of them wanted to be able to give and take in their sexual relationship, but found it difficult to do so.

Reproduced with permission, Routledge, from Couple Therapy from Depression

How couple therapy works

Therapy works at the deep seated root causes of complex difficulties in relationships and sexuality. By acknowledging and exploring these often hidden experiences that shape how we relate, a freedom is created to understand each other more and step out of defined roles, often reinvigorating the relationship.

About our services

We provide help with relationship issues including, sexuality, divorce and parenting.

Our service menu is here.