Mental Health
The 'Bright Futures' inquiry identified an estimated 20% of children and adolescents are experiencing psychological problems at any one time.
The New Beginning Support Project run by Youth at Risk was an innovative pilot programme based in the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit at Edgware Community Hospital, serving 5 London boroughs.
The unit admits young people experiencing a mental health crisis who need immediate and intensive treatment for their mental illness. Young people admitted have typically; attempted suicide or are experiencing the symptoms of psychosis, such as hearing voices and auditory or visual hallucinations.
The programme delivered one-to-one performance coaching to these young people through ‘committed partners’ trained in Youth at Risk’s performance coaching, who supported them in engaging with the provision available to them.
The project showed every sign of being a significant complement to the statutory support offered to these young people. Through the additional support of the 'committed partners' young people hospitalised at the unit were taking greater control of their lives. They set life goals, engaged with their support plan to achieve the minimum change set for their return home and once back in their community, used the support services available to them to build a stable and bright future.
By receiving the additional support of dedicated performance coaches; by experiencing a stable relationship and by seeing their goals as a positive choice rather than an imposition, the young persons’ levels of distress were significantly reduced. Their attitudes and behaviour became more positive, creating the opportunity and prospect of a better future for them and the communities they live in
Furthermore, seeing the beneficial effect of the young person & performance coach relationship within the unit when crisis level had been reached, there was a keenness to extend the service to young people experiencing mental health issues as a means of preventing them escalating to crisis point.
Being able to observe the success of the project professionals both in the unit and in the young people’s communities were asking for its expansion and were supportive of it gaining greater recognition as good practise to enable it to achieve core NHS funding status.
Sadly, this hope has not been fulfilled and the project has had to come to an end due to lack of funding.
