Exploring Liverpool & Manchester City Councils’ Delivery of Talking Teens

This case study brings together practice examples from Manchester City Council and Liverpool City Council on the delivery of Talking Teens from The Centre for Emotional Health. It is based on insights shared during a webinar hosted by the National Centre for Family Hubs.

Talking Teens is designed for parents and carers of young people aged 11–19yrs and is delivered over four group sessions by two trained facilitators. The programme focuses on helping parents to understand adolescent development, including how brain development influences behaviour, and supports parents to strengthen communication, manage conflict, and set boundaries in ways that protect and build relationships during a period of significant change. The approach is grounded in the principles of The Nurturing Programme; self‑awareness, empathy, and self‑regulation, and working in partnership with parents.

Manchester
Manchester is a city shaped by both economic growth and significant inequality. While it currently has the fastest-growing economy in the country, it also sits among the top five local authority districts with the highest proportions of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England. The city is experiencing additional pressures, including a housing crisis, which affect many families’ stability and wellbeing.

Families are facing multiple, overlapping challenges. The team has worked in partnership with The Centre for Emotional Health for nine years, delivering The Nurturing Programme and seeing consistently strong outcomes. Over time, practitioners identified a clear gap in structured support for parents of adolescents, particularly where families were experiencing high conflict, bereavement, or difficulties linked to teenage development. Talking Teens was introduced to address this gap and extend the nurturing approach into adolescence.

Liverpool
Liverpool is the 4th most deprived authority when it comes to children, driven by factors including health, living environment, low employment, lower income, and child poverty.
Workshops for parents of children moving from Year 6 to Year 7 highlighted gaps in parents’ understanding of teenage development, parenting approaches for this age range, teen behaviour, and the wider social pressures affecting adolescents. Liverpool had already seen strong outcomes from The Centre for Emotional Health’s programmes in Children’s Centres and sought an evidence-based, relational programme that could support families with older children. Talking Teens was selected to meet this need.

Manchester: embedding Talking Teens within Early Help

Parents access the service through referrals from schools, GPs and other health services, social work teams, and wider early help services. Practitioners are embedded within front door triage arrangements, enabling early engagement with families. Referrals are triaged through a multi-agency process to ensure families receive the most appropriate support, with Talking Teens delivered as a time-limited intervention within a broader network of support.

Manchester also provides workshops for social workers and other professionals to increase awareness of the different programmes available, helping practitioners identify which families may benefit most from Talking Teens or other parenting support.

The team places strong emphasis on relational engagement. Practitioners complete at least two home visits before the programme begins to build rapport and ensure families are ready to attend. This relational approach contributes to strong attendance, with Manchester consistently reporting retention rates above national averages.
Engagement continues through regular check-ins, including phone calls and home visits, and practitioners attend Team Around the Family and other relevant multi-agency meetings to ensure joined-up working. At the end of the programme, closing visits reinforce learning, followed by three-month follow-ups to review progress, offer additional support where needed, or signpost other services. Practitioners also gather feedback from schools and partner services, and where possible, capture the voice of the child to understand young people’s perspectives on home life.

Delivery also includes partnerships with secondary schools, where trained school staff co-facilitate groups, alongside focused Talking Teens groups with foster carers and collaborative work with CAMHS. A longstanding partnership with the charity We Love Manchester enables families to attend an annual residential in the Lake District, where parenting skills can be practised in a real-world environment. Families can then return home feeling more confident about applying these approaches in day-to-day life.
Manchester has adapted Talking Teens to reflect what works best with referred families. Groups are smaller than standard school-based delivery and are often arranged in a circle rather than cabaret-style seating to encourage openness and shared reflection. Sessions are extended by half an hour to allow more processing time, flexible breaks, and space for parents to move around and speak with practitioners individually. Some parents may complete The Nurturing Programme either before or after Talking Teens, depending on family needs.

An additional fifth session has been introduced in Manchester focusing on parenting in the digital world, drawing on The Nurturing Programme, NSPCC resources, and work such as Smartphone Free Childhood, with an emphasis on online safety and impact.

The Centre for Emotional Health provides ongoing implementation support, including online delivery resources and structured evaluation processes.

Liverpool: city-wide rollout through Family Hubs and partners

Liverpool introduced Talking Teens as part of a refreshed universal parenting offer following the appointment of a Parenting Coordinator in 2022, a wider review and the rollout of Family Hubs. Delivery built on the city’s established use of The Centre for Emotional Health’s programmes in Children’s Centres and expanded structured provision for parents of older children.

To widen capacity, Liverpool trained 16 facilitators in the Talking Teens model across secondary schools and the third sector. This included organisations such as Young Persons Advisory Service (YPAS), Positive Futures, and Kinship Carers. Parenting Inclusion Workers were also trained to deliver the programme in community settings with partners and schools, as well as on a one-to-one basis for parents referred into the parenting service. Liverpool also delivers Talking Teens through experienced foster carer networks, including Mockingbird hubs, with trained carers supporting other foster carers. Families are also signposted to evidence-based information through Liverpool’s Family Information SEND directory.

Delivery in prison settings requires a more creative approach shaped by security and family contact arrangements. In Liverpool, this includes work with dads in HMP Altcourse and HMP Liverpool through family time days, telephone contact and conversations about co-parenting and preparation for release.
Facilitators receive delivery resources, ongoing peer support and supervision, and support to gather evaluation and impact data. This shared approach means delivery is not reliant on a small number of local authority staff but is embedded across the city.

Manchester outcomes
Parents taking part in Talking Teens in Manchester have shown improvements in confidence, communication, and emotional awareness. Evaluation used TOPSE tools and showed that over 90% of parents reported higher confidence and self-efficacy after the programme.

This complements improvements in mental wellbeing measured through WEMWBS. At the start of the programme, 54% of parents reported low mental wellbeing. By Week 4, the proportion of parents reporting low mental wellbeing had reduced to 19%.

One case example in Manchester involved a bereaved family whose first and last visits could not have been more different. At the initial home visit, conflict between a mum and her daughter was intense, and the mum struggled to identify positive qualities in her child, saying, “I can’t cope with her anymore, I’ve tried everything but she’s awful. It’s hard to find anything good to say about her.” Through the programme, the mum developed greater self-awareness and recognised how her high expectations, combined with the experience of grief and adolescent brain development, were contributing to repeated conflict.

By focusing on responding with empathy and noticing positive behaviour, her responses changed. As her daughter felt more heard and understood, communication improved, conflict reduced, and respect increased. By the closing visit, the atmosphere in the home had shifted markedly, and three-month follow-ups helped demonstrate that these changes were sustained.

Liverpool outcomes
Since April 2025, Liverpool has captured evaluation data from 30 parents who completed the Living with Your Teen questionnaire after taking part in a Talking Teens group programme. Average total scores increased, with parents reporting reduced difficulty communicating with their teenager and increased knowledge of teenage development.

Parents described the programme as practical, accessible, and affirming:
•The ‘I’ statements were very helpful to cope with day-to-day issues with my teen peacefully and amicably.”
•“I felt satisfied, being heard with compassion and intelligence.”

Parents highlighted greater patience, increased negotiation skills, different approaches to conversation, and a stronger understanding that teenagers are still developing and need time to process feelings and expectations.

Across both Manchester and Liverpool, Talking Teens is most effective when delivered as a relational, partnership-based learning environment. The programme supports parents to reflect on their own responses and communication patterns, encouraging understanding their teens rather than directive approaches.
Manchester’s model demonstrates how embedding the programme within referral and triage systems, supported by pre-programme home visits, ongoing engagement and follow-up, can sustain attendance and support lasting change. Liverpool’s approach shows how widening delivery through schools, the third sector, and foster care networks can embed a shared nurturing ethos across a city.

Lisa Lunt ([email protected]), Parenting Co-Ordinator Liverpool City Council
Claire Hall ([email protected]), Parenting Practitioner Manchester City Council