Right Here: Improving Mental Health and Well-being for Young People
The Tavistock Institute has been commissioned to evaluate the Right Here Initiative: improving young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
Right Here is a joint initiative between Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Mental Health Foundation to support young people in improving their mental health. It is a groundbreaking 4.5 year project which aims to change the way in which the mental health of young people aged 16-25 is addressed in the UK.
Working with four pilot sites from across the UK, Right Here aims to show how new approaches to helping young people with their mental health needs can deliver measurable improvements to their mental health outcomes and can be replicated elsewhere.
Each of the pilot sites involves a partnership between the voluntary and statutory sectors, bringing together those with specialist skills in working with young people – particularly those most socially excluded and at risk of developing mental health problems – with statutory mental health services.
The sites will configure their work to a) improve the effectiveness of mental health promotion with all the young people they engage with, b) improve their interventions with young people at risk to help them build their resilience and prevent their problems from becoming more serious, c) intervene earlier and more effectively to help those young people who are already showing signs of mental ill health. Young people will be actively involved in leading the pilot sites, including in service design and delivery.
The pilots are expected to:
• Enhance the capacity of participating organisations to promote mental health and wellbeing for 16 – 25 year olds
• Facilitate improvements to the services commissioned
• Build the resilience of young people and their families in the local areas
• Improve the skills and awareness of staff in participating organizations in respect of prevention; mental health promotion; partnership working and young people’s participation
• Address stigma and discrimination
• Facilitate ongoing partnerships between the participating voluntary and public sector providers.
The four pilots will be launched in April 2010 and will run until December 2013.
The Tavistock Institute has been commissioned to evaluate the success of the pilots in developing effective models of practice and the impact they have had on young people’s mental health and wellbeing. The Institute works on the principle that evaluation is a useful and ongoing informative process that leads to the co-generation of learning – for this reason the evaluation will be conducted simultaneously with the development of the pilot sites. Similarly the Institute will be holding regular action learning sets, bringing together young people and staff from each site, to jointly explore problems and uncover active solutions throughout the lifespan of the pilots.
The Tavistock Team is drawn from research, evaluation and consultancy staff who specialise in the area of social inclusion and civil society. This includes Judy Corlyon (Project Director), Dione Hills, Joe Cullen, David Drabble, Matthew Gieve and Laura Stock.
For more information on the evaluation of Right Here, please contact Judy Corlyon on j.corlyon@tavinstitute.org or telephone +44 (0) 207 417 0407.
