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Powerful young voices

Building a youth-led movement to make sure support is there for anyone who needs it

Our strategic aims

  • Everyone young person who wants to can influence the decisions that affect their mental health.
  • Every young person who needs support - whether from the NHS, from local services or online - can get it.
  • Some of the key factors behind the rise in young people's mental health needs are reduced.
A group of young people laughing together outside on a bench. Group includes two black girls (one in a wheelchair), one black boy, and a white boy.

Activist Programme

Three people holding a placard which says 'creating change'. The person on the left is holding a small placard 'youth power' with the person on the right in a wheelchair holding a placard 'activating change = youth voice'

At YoungMinds, it is our ambition for all of our work to be delivered alongside young people.

Our 72 Activists are at the heart of that ambition, using their lived experience of mental health to work with us to run campaigns, reach other young people and use their voices to influence real change.

During lockdown, we moved all of our youth engagement work to online spaces which still had a strong impact.

Activist programme impact

  • 94% of those taking part in our programmes told us they felt they had made a positive contribution to young people’s mental health.

  • 97% said their contribution made them feel better about themselves.

Youth Panel

two young people have laptops with the third pointing at a board with research on. At the top of the board is YoungMinds.

The Youth Panel help shape our future as a charity and achieve our mission. They talk about things like strategy, safeguarding, fundraising, organisational culture, risk management, data protection, brand and marketing.

They ask questions like:

  • Is this right for YoungMinds?
  • How should we approach this?
  • Does this fit with our strategy?
  • Who else needs to be part of this conversation?
Our Youth Panel stand against a white wall with our logo in yellow and grey. The youth panel are standing together smiling and looking at the camera. Underneath the logo it reads: fighting for young people's mental health.

The value of our Youth Panel

In the words of our Youth Panellists

  • We make sure that all the big decisions at YoungMinds are made with young people at the centre
  • We’re working hard to increase the ways that young people can get involved, share their experiences, and have their voices heard. That way, we’re really being listened to, not just talked about.
  • We’re helping YoungMinds to open up conversations about mental health, encouraging more young people to reach out for support, and we’re giving young people the tools to manage their own wellbeing.
  • Through raising awareness and increasing understanding, we’re helping YoungMinds to support young people in the best way possible.
  • The Youth Panel is something special. Not many organisations involve young people in a way that enables them to contribute to all of the decisions that are made. We help to shape everything, and create the change we want to see.
    Elsa
  • I’m proud that YoungMinds genuinely uses the voice of young people to guide their approach as a charity and change the misconceptions around mental health.
    Alex
  • My experience at YoungMinds has been so humbling and insightful. Being a Panellist gave me a sense of accountability and responsibility to discuss important issues relating to young people’s mental health.
    Bernice
  • I have met some extraordinary young people from all walks of life, and couldn’t ask to work with a better team.
    Jordan

Activating change

Five young people standing and looking at the camera with trees in the background.

We launched a new programme, Activating Change, to train and support 12 Activists as media and public spokespeople.

These young people took part in 40 different opportunities, including a meeting with the Prime Minister, interviews in the Guardian and on ITV News, and contributed evidence to a Health Select Committee inquiry. With their media appearances being seen by an estimated audience of 40 million.

Read more about our work in the media

Beyond Tomorrow Campaign

A young person is on the right hand side of the photo looking serious and straight at the camera. On the left there is a dark blue fade which has text over the top. The text reads: Tell the Government to look #BeyondTomorrow and prevent young people's mental health needs from escalating. Underneath the text is the campaign name in light blue and white: #Beyond Tomorrow

As the pandemic hit, we needed to understand the impact it was having on young people’s mental health.

Across three surveys, we saw 14,680 contributions from young people to give us a clear picture of the difficulties they were facing. Using this insight, we ensured their voices were heard in the media, in parliament and in Government.

We launched a campaign, Beyond Tomorrow, to gather public support for our clear calls for Government action.

We coordinated wider action too, including a letter from 30 sector organisations.

18,919 people got behind our Beyond Tomorrow petition, including 3,966 young people.

Our messages were relayed in the media over 6,500 times.

The result was significant policy change and additional funding, including a £4.2m package for mental health charities and an extra £79m for NHS children and young people’s mental health services.

We secured a suspension of Ofsted inspections in schools and extra wellbeing resources for teaching staff. We also secured the roll-out of a major, multi-million pound public health campaign through Public Health England to help young people look after their mental health.

Amplified

We delivered the final year of our Amplified Project, working with the NHS to support and build participation in every part of the children and young people’s mental health system.

This project was delivered alongside 10 youth advisors and 8 parents/carer advisors and provided opportunities to engage with professionals at all levels right across the system. Over the course of 4 years of the project, we delivered training to over 1000 professionals, alongside 363 days of bespoke support to 12 clinical networks.

In addition to this we provided support for over 25 organisations across health and local government known as ‘trailblazers’, and created 15 practical resources for professionals.

In the final year of the programme we provided over 90 days of support specifically for the NHS England national children and young people’s mental health team, on a range of projects including the impact of moving mental health therapies to the focus on race equalities in patient care.

Our open access participation training for professionals has been really well received, with 95% of those taking part rating it as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ and 100% saying it has been relevant to their work.