Every young person has adults in their life who they can turn to
Every young person has adults in their life who they can turn to for help with their mental health, whether that's at home, at school or in their community.
Someone To Turn To
Making sure young people have adults around them who can really help
We know that if a young person doesn’t feel able to speak to someone, or doesn’t yet realise that they need help, the adults around them can often be the first people to notice. Those aren't just parents, but also teachers, education professionals, coaches, and youth workers.
In the last year, more young people than ever before have needed help and support with their mental health. We’ve heard from lots of small community organisations about how desperately worried they are about the young people they’re supporting. With local services struggling to keep up with rising demand, we’ve seen increasing pressure on parents, carers and families to provide that critical support.
That's why through this programme of information and training, we help these parents and adults who support young people have the confidence to offer the crucial mental health help that young people need. From our Parents Helpline to our community outreach and digital training, we can make sure that all young people have someone to turn to, and their intervention can make all the difference.
Our strategic aims
Every adult who wants to help a young person, can
Every adult who wants to help a young person with their mental health can come to us to gain the skills and confidence to do so.
Parents Helpline and web chat
Our Parents Helpline service provides a lifeline for thousands, offering expert, non-judgemental advice and guidance.
This service has never been more needed. In the last year, the complexity of issues that parents have contacted us about has become much greater, and more parents themselves are in need of emotional support.
Our Helpline team answered 14,047 phone calls, web chats and emails.
We also delivered 1,908 50-minute phone calls from our professional advisors. They were able to provide additional insight and guidance to parents whose children were experiencing particularly complex difficulties with their mental health.
Overall, the rating of the service and the likelihood to recommend remained very high at 95%.
82% of parents and carers said they felt more confident after contacting our service.
77% said they had learnt something new to support the mental health of the young person they cared for.
Information and advice for parents and carers
In 2020 we began triaging support to ensure parents and carers can access information that responds to their need. Parents and carers are now encouraged to check our website first if they need very early help, or simply want to find more information.
In 2021-22, there were almost 2.3 million total page views of the parent's advice, information and signposting on our website. This is a 64% increase on the previous year, up from 1.4 million page views.
Supporting schools during a challenging year
We continued to work with schools around the country as the disruption caused by the pandemic had an increasingly large impact on the mental health of their students.
This included our second year of work within the Department for Education’s Nature Friendly Schools programme. We worked with 45 schools across year two of this project, providing a tailored programme of training and consultation sessions for school staff to increase knowledge and understanding of mental health and wellbeing.
Pupil Voice course
In September 2021, we launched a new ‘Pupil Voice’ course as part of the Department for Education’s hub of support for Senior Mental Health Leads in schools. This interactive workshop supported attendees to create an action plan for participation within their school.
- 90% of participants rated the training as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
- 100% said they had something practical to do next following the course.
- 100% said that they felt more confident to enable pupil voice in their school.
Training the community
As we emerged from lockdown in spring 2021, lots of small community organisations told us they were worried about the young people they were supporting. They also explained how funding had dried up for them to engage in training on young people’s mental health.
Between April and July 2021, we made 800 places on our open access courses available free of charge to provide support to those who may not be able to pay to attend.
We trained a further 2,185 people through our in-house training offer, where we reverted to a mix of digital training and face-to-face work.
91% said they had something practical to do next following the course.
97% said that attending the training course will positively impact their practice.
Stepping Up programme
In 2021, we launched our Stepping Up programme. Reflecting on our organisational commitment to anti-racism, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, we developed the programme to focus on supporting young people from diverse communities. We worked alongside youth workers and young people to build on our information and training for adults who support young people in the community.