We know that we will only achieve our mission by ensuring young people have the power to make the changes they need.
For many young people, the support we can offer them through our first two programmes isn’t enough on its own. With more young people than ever experiencing mental health problems, we are having to tackle the reasons behind this rising need.
Like us, the young people who have lived experience of these issues are usually highly motivated to change things. They are determined to make sure no-one else has to go through what they did. Through this programme, we ensure that every single young person who wants to use their voice to start changing things for the better will be able to do so.
We harness the creativity and energy of young people, driven by the urgency of their lived experience. We train and support them, building their confidence and skills to be agents of change. And we use the power of digital to mobilise young people across the country.
Every 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.
At YoungMinds, it is our ambition for all of our work to be delivered alongside young people. Our flagship Activist programme had a successful year, with a combination of online and in-person delivery as Covid-19 restrictions eased.
Throughout the year, 54 young people participated in the programme, using their lived experience of mental health to work with us to run campaigns, inform our policy positions and use their voices to influence real change.
Highlights included a visit to 10 Downing Street to hand in a campaign letter from young people, as well as running sessions to determine how young people wanted us to challenge the Mental Health Act reforms and Online Safety Bill.
54 young people participated in the Activists programme.
Activists took part 277 times in 57 programmed activities.
Activities included 17 campaign co-production working groups and 22 insight sessions to bring the lived experiences of young people into our website and training resources, and to inform our policy positions.
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.
This year we said goodbye to our 2019-2021 Youth Panel and recruited and trained our 2021-2023 Youth Panel.
Since joining us in July, our Youth Panel have participated in over 70 different activities across the organisation, including:
Highlights included helping to shape all three strategy programme areas, developing our anti-racist, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (AJEDI) action plan, and informing our web and social media strategies.
Our Activating Change programme is designed to give young people with lived experience of mental ill health a stronger public platform for their stories and opinions, including in the media and in parliament. In 2021-22, the programme entered its second successful year.
Amid the research into young people's experiences of the pandemic, we felt no-one was asking young people themselves what change they wanted to see to help them feel more hopeful about the future. So we set about to understand exactly this.
We led online focus groups with young people from across the country who charities traditionally struggle to hear from, including marginalised and minoritised groups.
Building on this insight, we then designed our Big Young People’s Survey to understand at scale the vision of society that young people want to see for their mental health. We set an ambitious target of 10,000 participants and were delighted when 14,215 told us their views.
This data forms the backbone of our movement for change, setting our agenda with confidence that it truly represents the future young people want to see.
Alongside the Centre for Mental Health, Youth Access, The Children's Society and Global Black Thrive, we launched a new campaign to address the huge gaps in early intervention support. Our Fund The Hubs campaign was designed to add urgency to our long-standing call for a network of early support hubs to be set up in every local community.
The campaign was led and designed entirely by young people from start to finish. This included our Activists writing a letter to Rishi Sunak calling for funding, signed by 5,210 other young people, and hand-delivered to Downing Street. We also held two parliamentary roundtable meetings, attended by Ministers and Government Advisers in pursuit of our goal.
Our campaign film was viewed 145,348 times.
Our #FundTheHubs social media content achieved over 6 million impressions and 300,000 engagements.
We successfully encouraged 14,562 people to write to their MP about the campaign, and more than 23 MPs took positive action as a result.
Stephen Fry and 53 organisations stated their support of the policy in a letter to the Chancellor.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer announced early support hubs as official Labour policy at their party conference.