This year, World Mental Health Day's leading campaign is to ‘make mental health and wellbeing a global priority’. Wellbeing and mental health is a key feature of the work here at the Lab to improve outcomes for children and young people. NHS digital estimate that 1 in 6 young people have a diagnosable mental illness, with many 5 – 16 year olds reporting experiencing low mood, anxiety and eating disorders.
Last year, we joined forces with the Mental Health Foundation, Black Thrive and Colourful Minds on the “Becoming a Man” (BAM) project, a US-born programme developed by Youth Guidance, aimed at exploring and supporting young men to learn and practice impulse control and emotional regulation, among other social skills. Our job as the evaluators is to establish whether and how BAM might be feasible to deliver in Lambeth, South London.
From training packs for teachers on how to respond to disclosures of abusive relationships, to resources for young people on how to recognise the signs of coercive control, there’s something for everyone to feel better educated on both topics and empowered to take action so that young people and families have their needs met. We’ll be celebrating and sharing the exciting work these young changemakers have been designing – in person – at the #ChangeUp Exhibition in Paisley. This exhibition, open to everyone in Renfrewshire and beyond, is packed with the innovations designed by and for young people and system leaders, to inspire all of us to educate, empower and equalise systems to tackle coercive control and take early action on mental wellbeing.
This blog reflects on parents’ experiences of services during the pandemic and staff’s hopes and concerns for future delivery. We also share how evaluation has helped organisations understand these, and how it can be used to shape delivery in the future.
Dartington has formed an exciting partnership to develop, test and refine an ambitious approach to help young people and local areas develop locally produced and evidence-informed approaches to improve adolescent mental health. The team is led by Research Director, Professor Peter Fonagy OBE (UCL Psychology and Language Sciences) and Professor Tim Hobbs (Dartington Service Design Lab). Their partnership has been awarded a UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) Consortium award of £5.3 million over five years.
Save the Children UKare committed to working in local communitiesto promote children’s early learning and help narrow the attainment gap for children growing up in poverty, compared to their more affluent peers. To support this, they asked Dartington Service Design Labto develop a framework that local communities could use to develop an evidence-informed strategy for their area to support improved early childhood development. Tim Hobbs explains why it takes a holistic approach to evidence to make meaningful change.
There is a clear need for social care services to become more innovative and adaptable to tackle complex challenges in dynamic and changing environments. However, we would argue that traditional approaches to monitoring and evaluation have potential to stifle innovation.
Our researcher, Ben Hartridge, draws on his experience with Crisis – the national homelessness charity, to argue that monitoring and evaluation can and should be designed to support innovation in public services and systems.
Place-based funding hasn’t been the only thing we’ve been looking at – we’ve also brought people together on how to increase the take-up and quality of youth social action in education, and worked with match funders on how best to evaluate the social action they’re supporting
Last month we held our first Dartington Service Design Lab lecture in Edinburgh, Scotland. The theme of our event was “Systems Thinking: Unlocking it’s potential to improve children’s outcomes”.
The Dartington Service Design Lab is developing a strategic collaboration with PenCHORD and the wider PenCLAHRC. Based in the south-west of England, PenCHORD is a leading research centre specialising in operational research and healthcare system modelling.
The Dartington Service Design Lab is entering into a strategic collaboration with the Brown School’s Social System Design Lab at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.
