How can we tackle mental health challenges for young people?

If recent newspaper headlines are anything to go by, the state of children’s mental health in the UK is bad – and getting worse. Never before have so many children met the threshold for a mental health diagnosis, and referrals to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are now at an all-time high. Raising awareness of these challenges is vital and at UCLPartners we are working with our local health systems and young people themselves to find, test and learn from novel solutions too. We have two areas of focus: finding ways to support young people’s mental health earlier before they develop mental illness; and identifying ways to tackle the biggest problems in more acute services.?

Supporting young people’s mental health earlier??

This year’s theme for children’s mental health week is “Know Yourself, Grow Yourself” - a theme we have already been exploring in our work in Newham through the Kailo programme. Kailo is a research programme funded by the UK prevention and research partnership, and led by UCL and Dartington Service Design Lab. The aim is to support young people in local areas to find practical ways to address the wider factors that shape their mental health. You can find out more about our work on Kailo, including hearing from some of our young people here.??

One of the exciting features of the Kailo approach is that it puts young people at the centre of the research and design process. In Newham, the young people we worked with identified that many local mental health challenges are driven by cycles of violence and crime related to high poverty levels in the area. They wanted to help other young people feel more in control and make better life choices. Through a detailed design process, they developed the idea of a Life Skills Hub. Current provision of training in Newham is fragmented and not widely known about, so the hub would deliver training in skills like financial literacy, cooking, and employability, as well as finding support through mentoring. The idea is still being developed, with further youth-led activities to understand the gaps and opportunities planned this Spring.

Working to support young people with acute needs?

We are excited about the potential of ideas like the Life Skills Hub, but we know that there are also serious issues in mental health services for young people with severe and urgent needs– with too many young people waiting long periods for critical treatment and support. We’ve been convening partners to explore solutions to these seemingly intractable problems in CAMHS. One example is our work on the long waiting times for ADHD and autism diagnostic assessments that have been impacting children up and down the country. Through workshops with academics and clinicians, as well as conversations with industry partners, we have mapped out a range of opportunities to work differently. Front runners include using AI to speed up back-office processes and clinical report writing, developing a more flexible assessment process, and thinking about new workforce roles. Over the next few months, we will be ?developing and testing these ideas – if you are a clinician or industry partner, we’d be keen to hear from you.

Innovating in both preventative and acute settings?

We know there’s a big appetite for new ways of working to improve children’s mental health in both community and more acute settings. We think these changes need to go hand in hand – improving productivity and flow in acute settings to free up capacity that can be re-invested in prevention. As we move forward, we’ll continue to put young people and their views at the centre of this work, recognising that young people themselves are best placed to tell us what they need. ?