One Year On: The Impact of the Healthy Young Minds Alliance
What is Healthy Young Minds?
Healthy Young Minds is a 5-year (plus 2) Cheshire East Council commissioned service, comprising three providers Just Drop In and Visyon and CVSCE.
Just Drop In and Visyon provide early intervention support services directly to children and young people and their families in Cheshire East.
Ange Richardson - lead contact for the Healthy Young Minds Alliance “The first year of the Healthy Young Minds service has been a real success particularly in terms of direct delivery of bespoke interventions to Cheshire East children and young people. The foundation work for the Healthy Young Minds Alliance is now complete, and we are now building the necessary structures to ensure long-term success in supporting the mental health and well-being of children and young people.”
CVS CE is responsible for setting up a Healthy Young Minds Alliance in Cheshire East to: -
Improve consistency, coordination, and earlier intervention
Maintain a multi-agency focus, keep the conversation going, and develop continuous loops of action, monitoring, good practice, and feedback.
Contribute to clear statistical evidence of positive change over time.
Bring a broad range of organisations from all sectors together with young people at the heart of discussions, to identify challenges, bottlenecks, and key priorities to create clear, simple pathways to best support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
How the Healthy Young Minds partners are working together
The providers work together, to enable children and young people and their parents and cares to access support, via a range of accessible early intervention and prevention services in a variety of settings including schools, provider premises and community venues in Cheshire East.
Through the establishment of a Healthy Young Minds Alliance, a diverse range partners are brought together from Health, Local Authority, Education and the VCFSE sector, to share information, raise awareness of support and tackle issues together.
What activities and services do Healthy Young Minds deliver?
Just Drop In and Visyon provide 1:1 and group work early intervention support - including counselling, parental peer support, Mental Health First Aid (for both schools and young people themselves), school resilience and psychoeducation workshops, whole school interventions and young people peer mentoring and support.
CVS CE manages the Healthy Young Minds Alliance - with opportunities for shared learning, awareness raising, both face-to-face and online – together with priority themed workshops on topics such as self-harm, SEND, children and young people not in school or home schooled - and mental health and wellbeing difficulties for younger children.
Healthy Young Minds Key statistics
149 entries were received from Cheshire East schools for the Healthy Young Minds logo competition with the wining logo (chosen by a panel of young people) coming from a young person at The Macclesfield Academy.
In year 1 of the contract 1307 children and young people received a bespoke package of support.
301 professionals supporting children and young people in Cheshire East have signed up to undertake Solihull training on brain development, attachment and understanding trauma
There is now a strong Steering Group of 18 Alliance members who voluntarily oversee the work of the Healthy Young Minds Alliance.
A database of 280 individuals interested in the work of the Healthy Young Minds Alliance is now active - with a series of engagement opportunities such as E-Bulletins, face to face events and themed workshops planned
Healthy Young Minds Impact
Young people have benefitted from increased opportunities to access early intervention and prevention mental health and wellbeing support provided by Just Drop In and Visyon.
The Health Young Minds Alliance has developed clear Terms of Reference which define the goals and mission to support children and young people's mental health and wellbeing. The Alliance has successfully formed strategic partnerships with various stakeholders, including education, health, and community organisations whilst working closely with many LA teams. These partnerships are crucial for creating a comprehensive support network for children and young people going forward.
In summary, much has been achieved in Year 1 of the Healthy Young Minds commissioned service - with the foundations for future success being firmly laid for partners to continue to work together, ensuring a cohesive approach to mental health and well-being for young people in Cheshire East.
