Background

Funded by Mind through the Co-op resilience programme, this project is designed to work directly with young people to suggest, develop and pilot systemic changes for young people to access support for their mental health. To achieve this in York, we have worked through service design principles, and are currently at the stage of beginning to pilot ideas.

Research

Researchers carried out 12, in depth, qualitative interviews with young people who had lived experience of mental ill health and had experience of accessing services ranging from mentoring at York Mind to statutory CAMHS. The researchers also carried out research interviews with 13 stakeholders including a GP, head teacher, and CAMHS staff amongst others such as parents with lived experience. We got together a small team to look over the research case studies and identify themes. These were:

Young people simply don’t know what to do, where to go or who to speak to

They feel they have no voice and that they are not being heard

There is a range of fear and stigma that prevents young people from reaching out for help

There is a lack of personal connections and they feel they are left in limbo

Some of the workforce are experiencing burn out

The themes were formulated into design principles, which we presented as questions that we could look at answering.

§ How might we support the system to talk to each other in real time?

§ How might we de-mystify services, particularly for underrepresented groups?

§ How might we energise the workforce and ensure that resources are in the right place?

§ How might we stop accepting lengthy waiting lists and communicate with those currently on waiting lists?

§ How might we create a system where young people believe they will receive the support they say they need?

Co-Production

Through a series of co-production of workshops with both stakeholders and young people, we generated ideas to answer the “how might we” questions, which were shortlisted into the following:

v A single point of access website for all things to do with children and young people’s mental health in York. With bespoke features such as flow charts of referral processes, up-to-date waiting times and a create your own mental health plan as well as details on services and information on conditions.

v An information campaign to be delivered via the website, social media, schools and youth services to raise the profile of mental health issues and destigmatise them.

v A positive stories campaign of videos of real life people who have lived experience of mental ill health to support the information campaign and signpost to support and services.  

Prototype

The three ideas above have been prototyped with groups of young people and stakeholders to consider the purpose, detail, design and what they would look and feel like. We are now consulting with media companies and web design teams to find the best fit for our project.

Next Steps

We are now in the process of developing the website and campaigns to pilot. We have three Advisors aged 16-22 to help guide the project as well as York Mind’s Young People’s Steering Group. However we are looking to work closely with other local services and support to ensure that content is accurate, relevant and helpful for young people. We are seeking to work with a small number of providers to feature on the pilot website.