Welcome to the EmPaTh Parenting Hub. The hub aims to empower parents to parent therapeutically and nurture loving attachments. It specialises in supporting adoptive parents, special guardians and foster carers as well as parents with children presenting with neurodevelopmental differences such as Autism and ADHD. We understand the extra challenges and pressures that come with parenting children with disrupted early attachments and neurodivergence and know how vital specialist support is.

Therapeutic Parenting (TP) is the term used to describe a type of high structure/high nurture intentional parenting that fosters the feelings of safety and connectedness so that a traumatised child can begin to heal and attach securely. TP is a great approach when parenting children with early life trauma such as abuse, neglect and separation from their birth parents.

Here at the EmPaTh Parenting Hub, we offer a range of supportive services, from 1:1 parenting consultations to 12-week courses to respond to the varied parenting needs you may have.

EmPaTh Parenting Consultations

Our parenting consultation offers you the opportunity to dive into one key challenge you are facing and work through this together as well as offer some solutions. Afterwards you will be provided with a summary of the conversation had during the consultation with a reminder of the key actions that we develop together in the session.

The consultations are: 

• 50 minutes long 
• Cost £195
• Include a short summary report

You can book one consultation or more, we often find booking a follow-up consultation can be a useful way to consolidate the information and provide some accountability. 

Course of 1:1 Therapeutic Parenting Sessions

1:1 therapeutic parenting sessions are a course of regular (weekly or fortnightly), 50 minute sessions with a highly trained specialist to help to develop your therapeutic parenting skills and manage a range of behaviours that feel challenging to parent. 

These can be funded via the Adoption Support Fund if your child has access to this. Please let us know if you would like support in accessing this fund.

The EmPaTh Parenting Group

Are you an adoptive or special guardianship parent? Is your child being defiant, aggressive, or lying? Do they struggle to regulate their emotions? Are you feeling burnt out and stuck with parenting? 

If you answered yes to the above…

Then the EmPaTh Parenting Group may be for you!

What to expect from attending the EmPaTh Group?

The EmPaTh groups are friendly and supportive online groups with several aims in mind: 

1. To provide you with knowledge, practical skills, and professional support to empower you to understand the meaning of developmental trauma and its impact on children and families like yours.
2. To identify symptoms of parental burnout and understand how to prevent burnout in the future. 
3. To develop your therapeutic parenting skills and enhance the quality of the attachment with your child/ren.
4. To support you in managing behaviour that challenges with regards to your child/ren.
5. To provide strategies to help coach your child/ren to cope in moments of crisis.
6. To enable a shared experience, promote a shared understanding and develop supportive relationships within the group. To offer you a place to be heard and listened to by other people who get it.
   
   

What the EmPaTh Group entails: 

• 2-hour weekly sessions (with a short break in the middle)
• Held 12 sessions which run during term time
• Accessed online using Zoom
• Facilitated by two experienced clinicians
• Your family will be allocated to an EmPaTh Team member who will meet with you prior to the group starting, midway through, and three months after the group. They will also be a point of contact if needed.
  
  

Testimonials from previous EmPaTh Group Parents

“Excellent and surprising course that has been a lot more valuable and relatable than I ever envisaged. I feel like it’s the start of a sea of change that will take a long while but it’s a start. I feel much more knowledgeable and have had my feelings and responses validated as typical, and not anything that is lacking in me and my parenting style.”

 “We aren’t by any means all the way there with our child yet, but the course has reinforced my ability to cope and care with some useful skills and a new level of understanding, and will hopefully help with a pathway to finding further help for our child”

 “I found Gracie and Marilyn created a great environment where I felt it was honest, positive and supportive. Gracie and Marilyn showed excellent professional knowledge and were very open to questions and giving more of an in-depth answer when needed.”

“I just wanted to say, thank you for such a great course. It was very interesting and informative, with lots of fab handouts. I have learnt a lot and using the skills to understand and defuse behaviours.”

“I was initially worried about the format that the course would take, as I am not very technically minded. However, my worries quickly disappeared. Gracie and Marilyn were so welcoming and calm that the whole group were able open up and share experiences very quickly. This allowed us to understand we are not alone and gave us the opportunity to bond and support each other without feeling judged.” 

“This was a good course. Information was good and being able to openly discuss things was enlightening. For 12 weeks you didn’t feel like you’re on your own. And speaking to both other parents and professionals that get it was refreshing. The Empath team were very good. Spoke with us rather than at us. Friendly, listened and offered no judgement to anyone.”

EmPaTh Parenting Talks/Workshops

Coming soon…

We will be hosting a number of workshops that you can attend live (virtually) or listen back to. The focus of these workshops are likely to include: 

• Dealing with aggression
• Dealing with Lying 
• Dealing with Stealing
   

If you would like to be added to our mailing list to be kept up to date of these talks then please email Dr Gracie McLaven on gracie@serendipitypsychology.co.uk

Free Resources

Watch this space for blog posts to help you parent therapeutically.