This report draws on analysis of data from Coram Family Lives’ flagship helpline service between 2021 and 2025, alongside an overview of its wider services and a new literature review.
At Coram Family Lives, we recognise that one of the most important roles we play is in providing early support before difficulties escalate and become significantly harder for families to manage. We also know that, for many parents and carers, simply feeling that they are not alone can be an important first step towards confidence, stability and change.
This report highlights a wide range of issues that we continue to encounter through our data, services and engagement with families.
Key findings
Data from contacts made to the Coram Family Lives helpline provides insight into some of the key difficulties families have contacted the charity about over the last five years. We have focused on the top five issues that have been most often recorded as the primary issue those contacting the helpline wanted support with.
30,000
calls, messages and Whatsapp chats from parents who said they felt overwhelmed, exhausted or on the verge of crisis last year
1 in 5
families contacting our helpline were struggling with divorce or separation
3,300
people contacted the helpline in 2025 reporting risks of harm
Our latest report shows that many single mothers face multiple, overlapping challenges at once. Not just the day-to-day demands of raising children alone, but also concerns about their own mental health, their children’s emotional wellbeing, managing challenging behaviour, and the ongoing impact of divorce or separation. These pressures rarely happen in isolation. They intersect, making it harder for families to cope. This is why early support and targeted help for single parents is so crucial.
Coram Family Lives is seeing increasing levels of diagnosed and undiagnosed neurodivergence in the families who contact us, adding to the complexity of the issues they face. Families can’t wait years for support while they struggle to manage challenging behaviour, school attendance difficulties and mental health pressures. Children and young people with suspected ADHD or autism need earlier assessment and families need practical support before, during and after diagnosis.
Recommendations
The Coram Family Lives helpline provides a crucial early warning system for statutory children’s services and an essential open-access provision that helps families de-escalate difficulties before needs become entrenched or reach crisis point.
1
Recognise and promote open-access family support.
2
Target waiting times for Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Services.
3
Increase capacity for ADHD and autism assessment, diagnosis
and support.
4
Develop targeted support for single parents in every area.
5
Respond earlier to child-on-parent aggression.
6
Expand access to early legal advice,
Further research should also be undertaken into effective interventions for child-on-parent aggression and violence, so that policymakers, commissioners and delivery organisations can respond with greater confidence and consistency.
The Families First Partnership Programme provides a particularly important policy opportunity. Coram Family Lives shares its ambition to deliver accessible, family-centred early help and to strengthen partnership working with local authorities, safeguarding systems and the Department for Education.