Our mission is clear
For all young people to get the mental health support they need, when they need it, no matter what.
Doing so can prevent an emerging mental health need becoming a crisis.
Focusing on the 'now' to support young people in the future
This last year, it has felt like we’re working to two timelines.
On the one hand, we’ve had to focus on the ‘now’. Whichever way we look at it, the situation for young people’s mental health across the UK is moving in the wrong direction with the cost-of-living crisis making it worse. Young people are struggling in record numbers, and we’ve delivered more support than ever as we attempt to keep up.
But we’ve also reached important milestones that are paving the way for our work in the future. It’s been a year of discovery as we’ve tried to deepen our understanding of how young people are experiencing the world. We’ve done deep dives into our services and made plans for how we can grow our impact and connect with audiences we’re not yet reaching. We've explored with young people how we can provide better support, including looking at where there might be gaps in our services. We've conducted research on a scale and depth we've never done before, with the aim of understanding why there is such a staggering rise in young people experiencing mental health problems.
We’ve done all this because, whatever the answer is to the problem we’re faced with, we know it can’t just be about doing more of the same. As the crisis grows, we must be effective in rising to the challenge and facing it head on.
We need, more than ever, to remain laser-focused on becoming a greater force for change and source of support for young people. And it’s exactly because of that focus, we enter this year with a sense of excitement. We can now act on the new insight we’ve discovered and continue building even stronger structures to support young people’s mental health. With the continued support of our funders, our friends, and our amazing community around us, together we’ve got this.
Our theory of change
Young people's mental health needs are not supported early enough, and often only when they have reached crisis point.
This is the problem we want to solve and we aim to address this through our three strategic programmes:
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Programme one: Never Alone
Helping young people look after their own mental health.
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Programme two: Someone To Turn To
Making sure young people have adults around who can really help and support them.
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Programme three: Powerful Young Voices
Making sure young people have the power to make change and ensure there is mental health support for anyone who needs it.
Through these programmes and by working with young people, our work will lead to these strategic outcomes:
- fewer young people need crisis or emergency support
- young people are able to get the help and support they need quickly and receive a high-quality service
- there’s a reduction in things that lead to young people struggling with their mental health and needing support
These outcomes mean we can achieve our mission and ultimate goal.
Our mission is for all young people to get the mental health support they need, when they need it, no matter what.
Our ultimate goal is to stop young people's mental health reaching crisis point.
Anti-Racism, Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Our mission is clear: for all young people to get the mental health support they need, when they need it, no matter what. But there is a very important word in that statement that for many years we had been guilty of neglecting – that word is ‘all’.
Black and minoritised young people face racism, prejudice, discrimination and systemic barriers to support which mean they are more likely to struggle with their mental health.
It’s been a pivotal year for our Anti-Racism, Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (AJEDI) agenda. We published our new AJEDI plan and made important progress through the first year, including making our staff training and development, service evolution and public campaigning more representative of Black and minoritised groups.
This work has been pivotal to our progress, but we also know just how much work we still have to do. We recognise that we're not where we should be and how far we still have to go. But we are truly committed to continuing this work and holding ourselves accountable.