Director of Barnardo’s Scotland, Martin Crewe, speaks at the Renfrewshire Strategic Partnership Learning Event: Redesigning Mental Health and Wellbeing Support for Children and Young People
Today, Barnardo’s Scotland is sharing the early learning from our strategic partnership with Renfrewshire Council. Together with other local partners we are aiming to make a significant improvement in the Mental Health and Wellbeing of children and young people across the local authority area.
This is part of a UK-wide Barnardo’s initiative which also includes strategic partnerships with the South East Health & Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland and North Tyneside in England. Promoting mental health and wellbeing has always been at the heart of Barnardo’s work and is now an explicit priority in our Ten Year Strategy.
Across Scotland, too many children and young people are not experiencing good mental health and wellbeing. There is ample evidence that despite an increased focus on mental health services for children and young people, the numbers requiring support are going up. This is not just about waiting times to access CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services) - there needs to be a fundamental shift to support prevention and early intervention.
Mental Health and Wellbeing is a multi-faceted, complex issue, with multiple contributing factors. It is not surprising that the systems supporting children and young people are often complex and fragmented.
Strategic partnerships adopt a collaborative approach to improving the mental health and wellbeing system. By working in partnership with Local Authorities, NHS, voluntary and community organisations and most importantly children, young people and their families, Barnardo’s aims to facilitate whole systems change. We aren’t promoting a particular service or model but are firmly focused on prevention and early intervention.
Between March and May of last year we ran consultation workshops and focus interviews with over 70 children and young people, over 65 practitioners and 26 strategic partners. This consultation process and a system design approach have given a fantastic insight into how best to tackle the causes and not just the symptoms of poor mental health.
Together with Renfrewshire Council, we are still in the early stages of looking at whole-systems change and service redesign. With the vision to achieve transformational change, the partnership presents opportunities and the potential to do things differently, and to look at innovative solutions to locally identified needs.
Today’s event provides the opportunity to find out more about progress in Renfrewshire and to hear insights from those involved. This is hugely exciting and groundbreaking work which we believe will have a significant and sustained impact for children and young people in Renfrewshire. We hope that our experience will inspire others across Scotland.
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Martin Crewe is Director of Barnardo’s Scotland
This is the text of a speech given at the Renfrewshire Strategic Partnership Learning Event: Redesigning Mental Health and Wellbeing Support for Children and Young People, on Thursday 5 March at The Melting Pot, Edinburgh.