We know the only way to transform young people’s mental health is to give them a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Over the past year, our campaigns have focused on ensuring early support is available in every community, influencing government policy, and tackling the wider issues that put pressure on young people today.
Through Fund the Hubs, End the Wait, A Million Pressures and Future Minds, we’ve worked alongside young people, policymakers and partners to push for systemic change, highlight the barriers young people face, and secure commitments that make a real difference.
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.
Our End the Wait campaign, to get a mental health support team in every school in the country had a huge boost this year. We got a solid commitment from the Labour government that they would roll out mental health support teams to every school in the country by the end of this Parliament.
This current Parliament sees debates around the landmark Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. This Bill will form fundamental protections and legislation that will impact young people’s mental health, in and out of education. Over the last 12 months we have campaigned on upcoming government education reforms and continue to call for improvements on how schools and education impact a young person’s mental health.
This year, we’ve managed to secure another 12 months funding for our campaigning work to ensure early mental health support hubs are provided in every community in the UK.
As part of the Fund the Hubs coalition, we’ve been campaigning since 2019 to make sure there’s mental health provision for young people as soon as they need it, wherever they live. At present, early support is patchy at best, and the faster a young person can receive support, the more effective that support usually is.
Over the last 12 months our Activists have also been working with MPs and Ministers, advocating for these hubs, and providing decision makers with compelling evidence and first-hand experience of the impact effective mental health provision can have.
This breakthrough marks a fundamental shift for mental health provision, and a great success on a long-standing priority for our campaigning.
£5 million commitment
Our campaign has led to a government commitment of £5 million to fund a pilot of 24 early support hubs, with a view to a full roll out. This pilot has now been extended for a second financial year.
Full national roll out
At the 2024 United Kingdom general election, we secured commitments from each major party, including Labour, that they would deliver a full national roll out if they were to form the next government.
This year, we have led a coalition to campaign for investment and reform in the Government's upcoming spending review and 10 Year Health Plan. The Future Minds coalition, led by YoungMinds and comprising Centre For Young Lives, Centre for Mental Health, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition and the Prudence Trust is our response to the need for fundamental system change in every area that impacts the mental health of young people.
The crisis in young people’s mental health continues to worsen, with prevalence rates hitting record levels last year, and radical thinking is needed to bring the kind of change that will actually turn things around for young people.
The Future Minds launch event in February 2025, took the campaign to the heart of Westminster, with two of our Activists telling their own personal stories of mental health, as we showcased new research that highlighted the economic benefits of spending money on mental health, and the potential loss of £1 trillion in lifetime earnings of this generation of young people. Baroness Merron, the government’s Minister responsible for mental health spoke at the event, and Future Minds has since spoken directly with Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
A Million Pressures was the start of our move away from just campaigning on services, towards campaigning on the systemic issues why young people are struggling. It provided us with the platform for new campaigns like Missing the Mark.
Around 12,000 people signed our petition to Keir Starmer to ask him to take action on the mental health crisis.
We asked the government to deliver their pledge to provide early support hubs for every community, commit to tackling problems before they begin and recognise that young people aren't the problem, they're living with the problems.
Next year we will:
We'll work with 20 leading mental health organisations to drive transformational change across UK mental health care. YoungMinds will lead public engagement, supporting young people to engage directly with decision-makers and strengthen locally based action.
We'll join a Wellcome Trust–funded coalition to influence government decision-making and spending, leading an engagement workstream focused on improving young people’s quality of life.
We'll continue to spotlight the drivers behind the decline in young people’s mental health through our Missing the Mark campaign, amplifying young people’s voices to influence education reform and the government’s Assessment and Curriculum Review.
As our Future Minds campaign concludes, we'll collaborate with coalition partners to set out a clear roadmap for reforming services, while working with young people to challenge harmful media narratives that impact their wellbeing.
We'll continue to hold the government to account on its commitment to deliver an Early Support Hub in every community.