With a system under strain, early clinical support provides real value for money. It is well recognised by researchers that adults need support to understand children’s needs to be most effective. Using play relationally with families is a simple, powerful step that costs little but changes everything.

After 24 years as a social worker, I have seen countless initiatives launched under the banner of prevention. Think Family Centres, Sure Start, Troubled Families. Each time, hopes were high and intentions good. And yet, almost every time the initiative faded before it ever had the chance to demonstrate the long‑term impact it promised.

What I have seen endure are the voices of families telling us what really works. Without fail, what works for families is being understood, emotionally held, and supported together with their children.

If there’s one thing that my career has taught me, it is this:

No child can be supported effectively if the adults caring for them are overwhelmed, unsupported or emotionally depleted.

Focusing solely on the child is like trying to heat a house with all the windows open. The warmth just escapes. When we work with both parent and child and, crucially, when we invite them to play or be playful together, we insulate the whole family system.

Play may be the most readily available resource families have, yet it is one of the most underused tools in professional practice.

When a parent and child play together in a safe, coregulated way, both nervous systems settle. Stress reduces, curiosity returns and capacity increases. And children who feel safer become less overwhelmed by the challenges they face.

A System Under Strain and the Cost of Delay

Children’s services, and the many social workers, teachers and early help professionals I talk to daily, continue to face unprecedented pressure. The Children’s Commissioner’s 2023–24 analysis shows that 50,000 more children were added to the waiting list for mental health treatment, bringing the total to around 320,000. This number is large enough to fill thousands of classrooms with young people asking for help and still waiting. In the same period, almost 60,000 children reached crisis point, meaning tens of thousands of families, schools and practitioners were trying to hold things together while support arrived too late.

For children in care, the situation is even more acute. Research from Coram and UK Trauma Council shows that children in care are at least four times more likely to have a diagnosable mental health condition than their peers.

When you picture those numbers as real children, not simply big numbers, the scale becomes impossible to ignore. I know it means a teacher staying late again because a student had a panic attack. A parent pacing the landing outside a child’s bedroom, trying to soothe distress with no professional guidance. A social worker balancing risk because the support a family needs simply isn’t available yet.

Why Early Clinical Support Creates Real Value for Money

When families wait too long for help, problems don’t pause until they get to the front of the queue. They compound. Schools see behaviour escalate and parents and carers reach breaking point. Often, as we all know, by the time services step in, needs have intensified and so have the costs.

More training for professionals to help them use play relationally with families would be a simple, powerful step one that costs little but changes everything.

You Cannot Help a Child While Their Carer is Drowning

It is not groundbreaking for me to say that we cannot support children effectively if the adults caring for them are running on empty. The Adoption UK Barometer shows a stark picture, with the percentage of adoptive families reporting they are in severe difficulty rising from 30% to 38% in one year.

It is well recognised by researchers that adults need support to understand children’s needs to be most effective. NICE reinforces this perspective, recommending that carers and frontline practitioners receive emotional and mental health support themselves, as well as access to specialist consultation, reflective practice and training. Their guidance (NG205) makes clear that the whole ‘team around the child’ must be supported if a child’s emotional needs are to be met effectively.

Even with everything we know, there is still a default reliance on referring children into individual therapy or group programmes, largely because stretched services have so few options that work at scale. But focusing support solely on the child, whether through a 6 week group or a block of therapy, rarely creates sustainable change when the adults around them are overwhelmed. When we only intervene with the child, without strengthening the adults who hold them day to day, we are often asking them to return to the same environment that struggled to contain or triggered their distress in the first place.

Trying to support only the child while the carer is exhausted, frightened or overwhelmed is like pouring water into a cup riddled with holes. The support pours in but it drains out just as fast.

This is where play becomes transformative. Play is a direct route to coregulation. Play decreases cortisol. Play reconnects. Play restores capacity.

When parents and children play together they find steadiness that no six-week group alone can create.

Realistically, it looks like this:

• A foster carer who feels confident responding to big emotions and can prevent a crisis before it starts.
• A parent who understands their child’s behaviour through a trauma or neurodevelopmental lens and is less likely to reach breaking point.
• A teacher supported by a clinical team who can hold boundaries compassionately rather than reactively.

Play is something parents and those working with children are naturally skiled in. When the adults around a child feel informed, supported and steady, realising they can help the child becomes easier to support and the system spends less time and money firefighting.

How Beacon’s Clinical Approach Aligns with Evidence and with What Families Tell Us

When I founded Beacon Family Services, it was because I had reached a point in statutory services where I could no longer ignore the gap between what I knew children and families needed and what the system actually allowed me to offer. After 24 years in social work, I had seen too many situations where I could clearly see what would help, namely steadying the adults around the child, responding relationally, slowing things down rather than escalating for another assessment or service. However the structures, the pressures, or the thresholds meant I couldn’t always respond in the way the moment demanded.

Beacon Family Services was born from that frustration, but more importantly, from a conviction that children thrive when the adults who care for them feel safe, supported and understood. I wanted to deliver more than short-term change.

Central to our approach is the simple, powerful tool professionals often overlook: Parent/child play.

Here’s what the model we have developed looks like in practice:

1. Early stabilisation for children and the adults around them

We step in quickly with relational and regulatory strategies based in play that help parents, carers and schools feel steadier. When adults receive calm, skilled support early, crises reduce, tension eases, and children regain a sense of safety.

2. Evidence-informed assessments rooted in real lives

We start by understanding the child’s world through the eyes of those who care for them. Behaviour never exists in isolation. Observing and support the child to play with their important adults becomes a window into relationships, regulation and unmet needs.

3. Holding the whole network, not just the child

Adults caring for vulnerable children need reflective space, practical tools and emotional containment. Our therapists receive this too. When the adults steady themselves, children feel it instantly.

4. Integrated, not duplicated

We work alongside teachers, social workers, health colleagues and carers to make support coherent, consistent and cost‑effective. Play becomes a shared language across the network.

Value for Money Means Supporting the People Who Hold the Child

My 24 years in social work have taught me the most effective, the most compassionate, and the most cost‑efficient thing we can do is support the adults who love and care for children every day.

That is where stability comes from and healing happens. That is also where value for money is truly found. In practice, our relational and play-centred approach is already delivering measurable savings. In 2025, every £1 invested in Beacon Family Services avoided £1.28 of CAMHS-equivalent costs, and delivered a net return of 28p.

Support for professionals

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

We provide training in relational play for professionals. We offer Theraplay®-based programmes such as Connect for Kids, and partner with support for schools and support for families. Professionals and families alike can access our lumin&us® Family Wellbeing app.