UK Youth thriving minds fund: learning and evaluation partnership
Research | Learning Partnership
We are working in partnership with UK Youth to support the youth work sector develop the capacity, knowledge and sustainability of their services in addressing young people’s mental health needs. Together, we’re using learning and insight to guide the strategic development of the Thriving Minds Fund over a three-and-a-half-year period.
The need
It is estimated that 1 in 6 young people have a diagnosable mental illness - a statistic that has grown from 1 in 10 in recent years. The Centre for Mental Health argues that young people’s mental health is “underfunded”, which is contributing to “sporadic and limited provision”. As a result, there are significant concerns over the decline in young people’s mental health and wellbeing in the UK - and a need for a swift response to address its wider determinants and how these can be effectively tackled. This is particularly poignant and needed following the pandemic. We know that youth workers are often best placed to support young people with their mental health needs, and this work with UK Youth aims to explore how the Thriving Minds Fund can offer a platform to allow youth workers across the sector to comfortably and safely start mental health conversations with the young people they work with.
Our response
Our Partnership with UK Youth commenced in May 2022 with a focus on the work of grantees, the activities they engage in and the support they need to deliver services. Thriving Minds Fund facilitates a “grants plus” learning and support offer and we aim to understand how grantees engage and use it to strengthen provision for young people in their own youth settings.
Within the first year our intention is to better understand the needs and demands of grantees and the young people they work with, alongside the wider system. In year two and three we will build upon the learning from the first year and strengthen, focus, learn from and adapt the grant-making and accompanying support offer over time.
Our role as a learning partner will enable us to understand learning within the grantee community and how this learning develops across focus areas of activity and between regional contexts.
This learning will support UK Youth to:
Help to focus grant support for greatest impact.
Strengthen youth sector infrastructure in relation to mental health provision.
Widen and deepen cross-sector partnerships.
We will then support UK Youth to make evidence-based decisions to programme development within the three years. We will also develop collective insight into how organisations have been supported to develop their capacity and capabilities around mental health, their understanding of a youth-work relevant active-ingredients framework, and to deepen their relationships with others in the sector and within the wider mental health space to promote sustainability.