We want to tell you something about why we built Synapse that doesn’t appear in any of our brochures.
We are parents. Our children are in the age range Synapse supports. We have sat at the kitchen table, watched our own children (and their friends) struggle, and felt the particular helplessness of not knowing what to do. We have had the conversations that go in circles. We have googled things at midnight. We have wondered whether we’re overreacting, and then wondered whether we’ve waited too long and left it too late.
We built Synapse because when we looked at what was available for young people who were struggling – not in crisis, not diagnosably unwell, but clearly not okay – we found very little that felt right. Long waits, clinical environments, interventions designed for different problems. A system that wasn’t built for the young person sitting at our kitchen table.
So we built something that was.
We didn’t build Synapse as mental health professionals looking for a market. We built it as parents who couldn’t find what our own children needed.
When your child is struggling, the feeling is horrendous. The morning that starts with another row about school. The dinner table where everyone is managing something unspoken. The moment you realise your child has stopped talking to you, not out of defiance, but because they don’t have the words for what they’re experiencing.
You want help. But you’re also frightened of the wrong kind of help. Frightened of making it bigger than it is. Frightened of labelling something that might just be a phase. Frightened of what it means if it isn’t.
And the system, when you reach it, often feels like it was designed for someone else’s child. Referral forms. Waiting lists measured in months. Clinical assessments that tell you what’s wrong without telling you what to do. Therapy that begins long after the moment of crisis has passed.
We know this because we’ve been there. Not as professionals observing the problem. As parents living it.
What we needed and what we hear from almost every family who comes to us isn’t complicated. It’s someone who genuinely gets it, who can start now, and who focuses on the practical things that make daily life better.
Not a diagnosis. Not a waiting list. Not a service that disappears between appointments.
Someone who works with your child on the things that are actually hard: getting out of bed. Getting to school. Managing the day without falling apart. Building back the routines that have crumbled. Learning to regulate the emotions that feel overwhelming. Functioning, in the ordinary sense of the word.
That’s what behavioural health coaching is. It’s not therapy — it doesn’t try to be. It’s structured, practical support focused on what’s happening right now and what needs to change in the next week. Delivered by coaches who have navigated their own challenges and know what it feels like from the inside.
What parents tell us they needed wasn’t complicated: someone who gets it, who can start now, and who focuses on the practical things that make daily life better.
Synapse coaches are young adults who have been through their own difficulties and come out the other side. They’re not clinicians and that’s deliberate. Young people who resist therapy, who find clinical environments uncomfortable, who feel lectured rather than understood respond differently to someone who has lived it. That’s not sentiment. It’s what we see in our completion rates and our outcomes.
But relatability isn’t enough on its own. Every Synapse coach is professionally trained and supervised by mental health professionals throughout. Every client is assessed for suitability before a coaching programme begins. There are clear escalation pathways if something more serious emerges. We are not a clinical service, but we operate within a clinical governance framework because the young people we work with deserve nothing less.
And we move quickly. Support for most families starts within seven days of confirmed suitability. Because we know that waiting is painful. A young person who waits three months is not the same young person who asked for help.
We can’t fix everything. Coaching is not the right answer for every young person. Where clinical intervention is needed, we say so. Where a family needs something we don’t offer, we tell them and we try to help them find it.
What we can offer is structured, practical, human support that starts quickly and focuses on what changes in daily life. For many families, that’s exactly what’s been missing.
We built Synapse because it didn’t exist when our children needed it. If your child is struggling right now – not in crisis, but not okay – we’d like to help.
