5min read
How we produce our online information and advice
Family Lives was formed over forty years ago by volunteers, with the aim of ensuring that all parents had somewhere to turn before they reached crisis point. We know that being easily able to access the right support at the right time can make all the difference to families.
The Family Lives website is a source of trusted online advice, with articles, videos and self-guided online parenting courses all free to access. It covers all ages and stages of parenting and different issues affecting family life, including divorce and separation, challenging relationships and behaviour, debt, and emotional and mental wellbeing.
Here’s how we make sure all this content is relevant, accurate, reliable and easy to understand.
On this page
Our family support workers
Our parenting information is written by our family support workers (it is never AI-generated) - who have years of experience supporting families with relevant issues and taking calls or answering live chats on our helpline.
Our guest authors
In a few cases, our information articles have been guest-written by an external expert who has specific knowledge of the particular subject area. In those cases, the expert is chosen by our Website and Digital Content review group, the article goes through our usual editing and review process, and the guest author is made clear on the article page itself.
Our parenting advice videos
All of our parenting advice videos were produced in consultation with subject-matter experts and produced and edited by Tomorrow’s Child, a specialist production company founded by Dr Jacqueline Harding, an international child development expert, author and media speaker with a track record as BBC Education Editor, headteacher and advisor on children’s TV.
Our digital and communications team
Our information pages are edited, proofread and uploaded by members of our digital and communications team to make sure the text is easy to read and understand, plain language is used and the text and layout are web-friendly.
Our editorial review process
Every article you read is thoroughly checked by our Website and Digital Content review group to make sure that it is accurate, helpful, balanced and non-biased. They are signed off by Rosemary Spillman, director of National Services, or our Chief Executive Jeremy Todd.
Our information is reviewed on a regular basis to ensure it remains up-to-date and accurate. We are currently reviewing how often different information types need to be updated.
Our content is created by humans for humans
All of our content is written and edited by humans. We do not use AI tools such as Chat GPT to create content.
We want to hear your feedback
Feedback from the parents and carers that use our site is really important to us. We want to continuously improve our content and make sure it’s as helpful and relevant as we can make it. Although we fact-check carefully, mistakes can happen, and we aim to correct them promptly when we are made aware of them
If you spot any errors, have any comments on our content, or suggestions on what else you’d like to see on our website or online parenting courses, please email us to get in touch.