Our STORY

It started with children speaking up

At a national conference in 1999, young people shared what it was like to care for a parent with mental health problems without support. Their honesty sparked action. In 2000, family psychiatrist Dr Alan Cooklin ran the first KidsTime Workshop and laid the foundations for what would become Our Time Charity.

Becoming a charity

After years of running KidsTime Workshops and raising awareness, the project became a registered charity The KidsTime Foundation. From there, the model began to take root across the country, offering families safe, creative spaces to learn, talk and come together.

A new name, a wider reach

We rebranded as Our Time Charity, and under new leadership, expanded our work beyond family workshops. We began working with schools and professionals to make sure more children could be understood and supported by the adults around them.

Adapting in a crisis

The pandemic hit. We took our workshops online, launched new sessions, and developed a licensing model so local areas could run KidsTime Workshops themselves. We kept pushing for change at policy level too.

Reaching more families and professionals

By the end of the year, over 20 KidsTime Workshops were running across the UK, with more emerging in Europe. We expanded our schools work, launched training through FutureLearn and the NHS Hub, and released our podcast My Family, Mental Illness and Me. Our founder Dr Alan Cooklin also co-authored the book Building Children’s Resilience in the Face of Parental Mental Illness.

A bigger platform, a louder voice

We appointed our first Public Affairs and Policy Advisor and were featured in the BBC documentary Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood, bringing our message to millions. Our work also gained visibility through new research: the Anna Freud Centre evaluated our KidsTime Southwark programme, and we partnered with Pro Bono Economics on a major report — Breaking the Cycle: The Economic Cost of Poor Parental Mental Health — making the case for better support for children and families.

New places, new voices, new ways to learn

We launched CPD courses for professionals, opened new KidsTime Workshops in Bradford and Dundee, and brought more personal stories to light in Season 2 of our podcast.

Standing up for children

We contributed to the APPG for Young Carers and Young Adult Carers’ first-ever inquiry into young carers, highlighting that support is often a postcode lottery for children who have a parent with mental health problems.

The story continues, in their words

Our Haringey KidsTime Workshop won BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind Award — a proud moment that recognised the life‑changing impact of our approach. We’re also working to raise the visibility of the voices that have long shaped our work, making them more central in how we speak, plan and act as a charity.