Children and Young People's Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board newsletter: July 2022

Spotlight - A visit to community-based supports and services in Clackmannanshire

The community services Task and Finish Group continues to support enhanced community-based services for children and young people across all local authority areas in Scotland. The Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Supports and Services Framework sets out a clear, broad approach for the support that children and young people should be able to access for their mental health and emotional wellbeing within their community. Local authorities receive a share of a £15 million Scottish Government fund to provide local services, in line with the framework, for 5–24 year olds and their parents and carers.

On 3^rd May, Neil Guy, Peter Innes and Leon Young from the Children and Young People's Mental Health team at the Scottish Government, went to Clackmannanshire to visit some of the community-based supports and services funded through the framework. They were welcomed by the local authority leads, Whitney Barrett and Lesley Taylor, who detailed Clackmannanshire's whole-system approach to mental health and wellbeing, and arranged for them to speak with digital service providers Kooth and Mind Moose. They were also able to hear from teachers, and to observe a therapeutic art session being delivered to a small group of primary school children. The team then visited an art studio where they heard presentations from Reachout With Arts In Mind, Inscape Therapies and Wellbeing Scotland about their work with local children and young people.

Peter said:

"It was really valuable to be able to visit in person and see the children benefiting from the framework funding, and it was great to hear directly about the range of digital services and creative therapeutic interventions that Clackmannanshire Council has put in place to support the mental wellbeing of its children and young people."

Joint Delivery Board Participation and Engagement

The Joint Delivery Board is committed to listening and acting on the views of children and young people to inform the work of the Task and Finish Groups focused on service design, delivery and evaluation.

This is being achieved through a range of engagement activities with third sector partners to reach a wide audience, including seldom heard groups of children, young people and families.

All engagement work undertaken is aligned to the Board's Principles of Participation and Engagement, which underpinned by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

Insight engagement work with third sector partners

Earlier this year, the Scottish Government commissioned Youthlink Scotland to work in partnership with Young Scot, Children's Parliament and the Scottish Youth Parliament to gather the views of children and young people about their mental health and support for mental health and wellbeing. This involves a two phased approach:

Phase 1 involved a survey led by Young Scot for young people aged 12–25. This was disseminated via social media and through partner organisation networks. The survey aimed to understand how young people access information and support for their mental health and wellbeing. 970 responses were received from across all local authority areas.

Phase 2 built on the survey questions through supported conversations with children and young people aged 8–25. YouthLink Scotland and Scottish Youth Parliament unitised their networks to invite third sector organisations, groups and schools to participate and capture the views and experiences of children and young people aged 12–25. This will ensure conversations happen safely and are carried out with adults they already know well. The Children's Parliament lead this work for children aged 8–12.

The survey findings were reported to the Joint Delivery Board Task and Finish Groups in July.

Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament (MSYPs) Facilitated Engagement Workshop

Three MSYPs, recently presented the findings from previous engagement sessions with young people to Scottish Government officials, Joint Delivery Board and Task and Finish Group representatives. The MSYPs highlighted three key themes from their findings which included:

• The need to continue to reduce stigma around mental health and wellbeing;
• Awareness-raising of existing services and improve communications; and
• Improve the meaningful participation and feedback of children and young people in services.

This workshop included facilitated discussion with the MSYPs to explore existing work, and what more needed to be achieved and taken forward by the Joint Delivery Board and Task and Finish groups.

MSYPs have written a blog about their experience which can be found on the Scottish Youth Parliament website.