The Spark Blog

  • Seeking Better Infant Mental Health

    Seeking Better Infant Mental Health

    The Spark joined like-minded organisations last month to highlight the field of infant mental health during the inaugural Infant Mental Health Awareness Week (6-10 June 2016). The week – created by the Parent Infant Partnership UK (PIPUK) – was hugely successful and The Spark’s National Development Director, Marion Laird looks back on the week and…

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  • Literally Searching for Answers

    Literally Searching for Answers

    Every day we pose thousands of difficult questions about many of life’s most challenging issues. But in 21st-century society, we do not put them to close friends, scientists, professional counsellors or medical professionals. We put them to Google. That’s right – we ask the world’s most famous and dominant search engine how to sort out…

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  • The Good and Bad of School Holidays

    The Good and Bad of School Holidays

    When we think about summer school holidays we imagine families playing on a sandy beach. We hear the laughter of kids enjoying days out with their parents and the smell of barbeques and suntan lotion. Basically, we imagine all the best bits of a travel agent’s TV advert – couples in love, parents at ease…

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  • The Taboo of Men’s Mental Health

    The Taboo of Men’s Mental Health

    Great strides have been made in recent years in the promotion and awareness of men’s physical health and wellbeing. Multiple forms of cancer and the likes of heart and lung disease amongst men have started to lose their taboo status. Consequently, the discussion of such topics is more commonplace. Work is still to be done…

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  • When Football Takes Over

    When Football Takes Over

    When it comes to the start of a new football season, transfer deadline day or a major championships (usually without Scotland) fans of the ‘beautiful game’ will be glued to TV screens and stadium terraces. For all the excitement and spectacle a season or tournament offers, couples across the country will be split as one…

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  • What Does Debt Do to Relationships?

    What Does Debt Do to Relationships?

    These days it is easy to become immune to the scale of the statistics quoted by news programmes, websites and in the media. Those concerning debt are a prime example. Consider this: according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in 2015 1.25m adults and 312,000 children were destitute in the UK. That is 1.56m…

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  • Infant Mental Health & Our Earliest Relationships

    Infant Mental Health & Our Earliest Relationships

    Most mental health work in the UK focuses on reacting to problems once they have arisen. By contrast infant mental health initiatives look at the foundations of our relationships – our earliest years of infancy. By taking a ‘best start’ in life philosophy, it is possible to prevent mental health issues arising later in life…

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  • Counselling from the Perspective of a Counsellor

    Counselling from the Perspective of a Counsellor

    The Spark counsellor Cathie lifts the lid in this blog on what counselling is like from her perspective as a counsellor. Many people may avoid counselling because of a lack of understanding and information on what it is and what it can help them achieve. In this blog Cathie looks at some common misconceptions about…

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