Finding support for a child

Start with the official routes

The Wellbeing Support Directory is the site’s list of official support routes. It covers the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and every route in it was verified against its official source in November 2026. Only routes verified from an official source are listed — a country is added only once its official route is confirmed, never guessed. That rule is why some countries are missing, and it is the reason this guide does not copy any local numbers into its own text: the numbers live in one place, the directory, where they are re-verified quarterly, and a copy here would drift out of date. If life is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number or go to your nearest emergency department — that is the directory’s crisis banner, and it stands unchanged.

Through school

School is often the first route a family meets. A school has a named member of staff for wellbeing in most systems, and a referral route to health services for children who need more than the school can give. The companion guide on schools and wellbeing describes what that support looks like — the whole-school approach, what teachers can do, and school-based mental-health support — and this guide adds only the practical point: if a child is struggling, the school is a route to support, not only a place where the struggle shows. Parents can ask the school what its route is; teachers can say what theirs is.

Through a clinician

For any personal question about a child, the route is a clinician — a GP or other qualified health professional. This site cannot answer personal questions, and it does not try: its guides name conditions and factors at population level, and its directory lists official routes. A clinician is the person who can assess an individual child, and the only person this site names for that job. UNICEF’s age-banded guidance for families includes, by age band, how to start a conversation with a child about how they feel — useful before that appointment, and linked here rather than repeated.

What this page does not do

This page does not triage, score, diagnose or assess any child. It carries no questionnaire, no checklist, and no signs list — a signs list would edge toward screening, which is outside this site’s scope, as the teen anxiety guide explains. It does not add crisis numbers: the directory’s crisis banner is the site’s crisis content, and no new crisis content is written here. And it does not import local service numbers from other countries’ pages — local CAMHS pages, for example, carry exact local referral routes and crisis-team numbers for their own areas, and copying them here would present local numbers as if they were worldwide. The worldwide counterpart to those pages is this one: official routes only, linked to the directory, nothing guessed.

Frequently asked questions