Supporting Parents. Strengthening Workplaces.
Who We Are & Why It Matters
The Quiet Load is a parental mental health and wellbeing community interest company, supporting organisations to better understand and respond to the invisible emotional and cognitive labour carried by parents in the workplace. This load often unspoken and unmeasured shows up in planning, anticipating, worrying, organising, and holding responsibility for others, alongside paid work. When left unsupported, it contributes to burnout, disengagement, and in some cases mental health challenges.
When recognised and addressed, it enables parents and organisations to thrive.
What We Stand For
- Parental wellbeing as a workplace responsibility
- Inclusion across pregnancy, parenthood, and the return to work
- Compassionate, evidence-informed approaches
- Supporting both people and performance
statistics
- Up to 70% of new parents reported feeling anxious about returning to work
- Over 90% said their employer offered no tailored returner programmes or one-to-one coaching, yet 92% believed such programmes would have been beneficial.
- 37% of parents felt so unsupported and isolated during their return they wanted to resign.
women experience a maternal mental health disorder (such as postnatal depression or anxiety) during pregnancy or within the first two years after childbirth.
Partnerships
Our Core Services
Awareness and Sustainable Support
Interactive talks and workshops introducing The Quiet Load, combining research, lived experience, and practical support and community building.
Bespoke Programmes
Structured programmes and group sessions to support new or expectant parents and caregivers, who are either due for maternity/paternity leave or preparing to return to work sustainably and confidently. From Paediatric first aid training to relatable coping strategies, we provide co-created solutions aligned to organisational culture, workforce needs, and strategic goals.
Management & Leadership Training
Practical training to help managers support parents and caregivers with confidence, empathy, and consistency across key transitions.
*Exclusive discounts available for pilot programmes
What Makes
The Quiet Load
Different ?
- Grounded in lived experience and real-world application
- Inclusive for all parents and caregivers
- Practical, compassionate, and realistic
- Designed to create lasting cultural change
Who We Work With
We work with organisations ready to support working parents through life’s biggest transitions and build cultures where people can rise, return and thrive.
Meet The Founder
I’m Shanice Grant-Barnett, and I’m a mother, Life & Mindfulness Coach, IFL and Founder of The Quiet Load.
My journey into motherhood wasn’t just a life change, it was an awakening. It opened my eyes to a world I hadn’t fully seen before, the invisible weight parents carry every single day. The mental checklists that never end. The emotional balancing act. The quiet sacrifices. The pressure to hold everything together while often feeling like you’re failing inside.
Somewhere in that space between love and exhaustion, joy and overwhelm I found myself carrying what I now call The Quiet Load.
I created The Quiet Load not as a brand, but as a truth. A truth that so many parents live but rarely speak out loud. It’s the unseen, unspoken weight of parenting the mental, emotional, and invisible labour that doesn’t get acknowledged enough. And yet, it shapes everything.
My mission is deeply personal. I am very passionate about parental wellbeing not just in the surface-level sense of “self-care,” but in a way that truly supports the whole human behind the parent. I believe parents deserve to feel seen, supported, and understood without having to justify their struggles.
Through The Quiet Load, I am striving to create impact that goes beyond conversation. I want to challenge the expectations placed on parents, shift the narrative around what strength really looks like, and advocate for real, meaningful change emotionally, socially, and culturally.
Our Team
The Quiet Load is led by founder Shanice Grant-Barnett, a life and mindfulness coach and postnatal depression survivor whose lived experience shapes the platform’s compassionate approach. She is joined by Debi Willis, a certified and experienced Paediatric first aid trainer, and Aisha Gordon-Hiles, a trauma-informed therapist and corporate mental health consultant, bringing together expertise across emotional wellbeing, practical support, and workplace mental health.
An Industry First
The Quiet Load is pioneering a new conversation around invisible parental mental health and emotional labour, shining a light on the hidden pressures carried in work, home, and caregiving roles. As one of the first platforms dedicated solely to this overlooked aspect of wellbeing in the workplace, it bridges personal storytelling with professional insight to help organisations and individuals better understand, acknowledge, and support the “quiet load” parents and caregivers carry every day.
Our Mission & Vision
To give people the language, tools, and permission to acknowledge what they’re carrying and to feel less alone in it. Through our work, we’ve supported individuals and organisations to:
Open up conversations around mental health and life transitions
Build more compassionate, human-centred cultures
Equip people with practical ways to support themselves and each other
This partnership with your organisation is especially meaningful, as we’d be supporting a workforce that is dynamic, diverse, and often balancing complex lives behind the scenes.
