Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 – Resources and activities for parents

The theme for Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 is “Know yourself, grow yourself” – and this is such a huge part of the role we play here at Beacon Family Services in helping to support families to grow and connect together.

About Children’s Mental Health Week

This annual awareness week was first set up by Place2B, the children’s charity In 2025, Children’s Mental Health Week takes place during the week of 3-9 February. This year, Place2B have joined forces with Here4You to explore how important it is for children to build self-awareness and express big emotions. Their resources are based on the characters of Pixar’s Inside Out and Inside Out 2. Before visiting the Place2B website to download their resources, you can read our CEO’s blog on how Pixar’s Inside Out can help you understand your child’s behaviours!

Beacon Family Services

Ways to support your child’s mental health

As a caring parent, you do whatever you can – sometimes in the face of great adversity, and with negative impact on your own self-confidence and resilience as a parent – to take care of your child’s mental health by being there, being receptive, creating a nurturing and supportive environment, and connecting through shared time, play, and increased mutual trust. Below are some of the ways in which we can help you as a parent to further support your child’s mental health as part of their development.

Create a supportive environment

In our individual family therapy and group activities such as our Theraplay® workshops, we not only offer a supportive environment for parents and children to connect with each other and learn from each other, but we also support parents to build on their own existing foundations of a supportive environment for their child. Many of the families we work with are adoptive or foster families, raising children who have experienced past trauma and need additional support to develop that vital sense of safety from which trust and resilience can develop and grow.

Creating a supportive environment means helping your child cope with feelings proportionately by feeling safe in their bodies and their whole self, not just being told that they are safe. It means learning to understand your child’s behaviours, and helping them feel their way through big emotions with your support.


Check if your child is safe, struggling, or drowning – FREE CODE

As part of our ongoing commitment to improving the mental health and emotional development of children through family therapy and support, we have updated the lumin&us® app. If you haven’t tried it yet, Children’s Mental Health Week is the perfect time to join thousands of families and give it a go!

lumin&us tower explainer
lumin&us tower explainer
lumin&us tower explainer
lumin&us tower explainer

Have you heard of the lumin&us® App? With free and paid versions available, it’s an award-winning, innovative neuroscience and relational play based App for parents and carers of children 3–12 years old. lumin&us® was created with families by play therapists, mental health professionals, social workers and educators.

Approved for use in the NHS, it has been used by thousands of organisations and families and has been clinically proven to:

  • support and promote good mental health in adults and children
  • improve and strengthen relationships and connections between adults and children by 82% and reduce conflict by 71%
  • help adults and children to feel more calm, content and comfortable

Built on the foundations of neuroscience and play therapies, and developed in collaboration with families by qualified therapists, educators and mental health professionals, lumin&us® supports families struggling with the challenges of parenting and family life. lumin&us® helps parents and children understand the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviours, build relationships and improve mental health and wellbeing through professionally-curated, fun, engaging games and activities tailored to meet the unique needs of each child.

Help your child feel calm in times of stress and anxiety

Every child is different, and may respond to different triggers for stress. Helping your child to feel more calm can involve helping them to feel calm in a physical capacity, which can help with their emotional state. You can encourage them to breathe more slowly to calm them down. You can engage them with physical activities that also directly help a child feel more safe and calm, such as den building or encouraging them to spend time outdoors with quick and easy games like outdoor treasure hunt. If you’ve noticed your child fidgets, it could help you to know that physical activity not only improves their motor skills but alleviates their stress and anxiety, so you can try viewing their physical activity as a medicine, and encourage them in playful, fun and quick activities. The lumin&us® app has many to recommend, and in our sessions we often help parents engage with their children through physical activities that are not only fun but also serve to further emotional connection, bonding, mutual trust, and a physical as well as emotional sense of safety and internal confidence.


Further support for parents

If you or someone you know is struggling with family relationships, Beacon Family Services can help. We provide a range of therapies and resources to support parents, children and families including our Connect For Kids Theraplay® group and parent workshops on a variety of topics, as well as access to peer support groups.

For further support, and to see our latest parent events and services, please visit the Families hub.

You can also explore our resources for instant support, including newsletters, online support groups, and much more. You can also read further insights and tips from qualified therapists and professionals on our blog.


We work with organisations, professionals, schools, and charities.

We provide training to use our resources with families and in schools. We partner with professionals, commissioners and organisations to provide in person and online support for families, professional development and training and support and supervision.