About Your Direction
We’re on a mission to empower young people to navigate the challenges of parental separation to build confidence, resilience, and hope for their future.
I am so impressed by the work on Your Direction, offering dedicated, effective and tailored support to children and young people.
Dr Eli Gardner - Clinical Child Psychologist and Co-founder of Kids Matter
Your Direction is excellent, offering specialized and effective support tailored to the needs of young people. I strongly recommend their workshops to anyone whose parents are now not together
Dr Erin Turner - Consultant Psychiatrist & Head Psychiatry Birmingham Medical school
Family breakdown can deeply affect young people's well-being and physical health. Your Direction’s workshops offer excellent support, providing practical tools for emotional healing and building resilience and healthy relationships. I highly recommend this course to any young person needing support.
Dr Paul Turner – GP and Clinical Service Lead at Karis Medical Centre Birmingham
The Your Direction material used is informative, concise and offers young people life skills to take away with them. Inspirational stories help the young people to see that hope is real and that a difficult life event such as parents separating can be seen as a journey that takes a different amount of time for everyone. The group work is educative and offers very important peer support
Julie Boyes – Children’s counsellor at Spurgeons
Combatting the teenage
mental health crisis
4 MILLION CHILDREN
in Great Britain are part of families with separated parents.
It is the
Biggest Factor
Affecting teenage mental health
Every child should have access to Targeted support
We monitor participant wellbeing (using WEMWBS scores) at the start and end of the Your Direction. Most recent results show 64% of participants had a low wellbeing score at the start of the workshops but, by the end, everyone moved up to at least a moderate wellbeing score, which is a significant improvement.
Participants also talk about gaining key life skills including recognising their feelings, improved listening, being able to communicate their issues in more healthy ways, accepting their parents for who they are and resolving conflict. All these skills are vital in building healthy relationships into the future.
Our Story
Your Direction was developed by Restored Lives in partnership with children’s charity Spurgeons.
Our materials have been developed with and by young people to ensure it’s based in real-life experience.
Alongside legal services company amicable we created Split Happens – an AI powered online space full of real life stories, expert approved advice, and practical resources – designed with young people who’ve navigated their parents’ split.
This groundbreaking digital hub aims to provide answers to young people’s pressing questions and create a bridge to conversations about the impact of their parents separation in the real world.
Our Team
Erik
Erik’s own divorce led him to start the charity Restored Lives, which Your Direction is part of. He is passionate about giving young people the joy and freedom that comes when they discover the skills to rise above family separation and move forward with confidence and hope.
Helen
Helen oversees marketing and operations at Your Direction and Restored Lives. A natural communicator and trained teacher, Helen’s own experience of divorce fuels her mission to reach as many young people as possible with the support and resources they need to thrive.
Shakira
Shakira brings the voice of young people to the heart of what we do. She leads our social media presence, and supports all our marketing activities, helping us connect and grow Your Direction and Restored Lives.