The School & Family Works was founded in 2009 by Mark Griffiths, an experienced educational psychotherapist, and became a registered charity in 2023.

We support children facing adversity to succeed in school by building strong, collaborative communities between schools and families. Our work focuses on improving wellbeing, strengthening relationships, and enabling long-term change.

We work with the two most powerful influences in a child’s life — their family and their school — to create lasting, systemic change.

Our flagship intervention is Family Group: a therapeutic, school-based community where parents, children, and school staff meet weekly. Together, they explore the challenges children face and co-create solutions that lead to real progress — at home, in school, and beyond.

In our Family Group communities, families help families to overcome the negative consequences of trauma, disadvantage and the layers of injustice holding them back.

We believe that while a child supported by their school and family can thrive, enduring change happens when both families and schools grow together — integrating insight, healing, and transformation into the way they live and work.