The crisis in young people's mental health - needing a LifeLine...

Following on from last week’s post about the disruption caused by Covid on young people’s education, I wanted to share another story along the same lines, about how - at the height of the pandemic - LifeLine Projects went above and beyond to ensure that vital support to young people’s mental health went uninterrupted…

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The need to protect and support our young people’s mental health has never been greater. Just today, 4th February 2022, the BBC has reported that there has been a 77% rise in the number of children needing specialist treatment for severe mental health crisis.

I am two years into a three-year evaluation of a project that couldn’t be more important, or more relevant, right now. LifeLine Projects operates SW!TCH Minds, which aims to improve and support the mental health of young people through a combination of in-school mentoring and positive activities.

LifeLine has a diverse team of strong, inspirational mentors (known as Youth Development Workers or YDWs), who bring with them a wide range of experience, both personally and professionally, that is invaluable in the support they offer to young people.

The project began in the autumn term of 2019, before we had any inkling that the world would change so dramatically just six months later. The Youth Development Workers started to make weekly visits to 18 schools in the London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge and Havering, quickly establishing important, trusting mentoring relationships with young people who were coping with challenging transitions and life-changing events that - without support - had the potential to affect their long-term health as well as their life choices.

Just a few short months later, the pandemic hit and, in March 2020, schools closed, with no indication of when (or even if) they would re-open. SW!TCH Minds’ delivery model was immediately disrupted. If schools were closed, they couldn’t continue to meet with their young people. And, one of the central principles of their programme was that participating students would be able to rely on regular contact and support from the same mentor: the relationship that they had created at the start had already become something the young people were relying on.

The pandemic created terrifying levels of anxiety for almost everyone, but particularly for the vulnerable young people taking part in the programme. Forced to stay home, with no physical contact with their friends, their family outside of their home or their teachers, expected to suddenly transition to independent study - getting to grips with online learning (assuming of course that they even had access to a computer or the internet) and finding the motivation to stick to a timetable of lessons by themselves - while watching their families try and cope with the fear of not being able to work, or coping with serious health or domestic issues: the pressure on these young people’s mental health piled up.

So, SW!TCH Minds needed to find a new approach to continue their work. If they weren’t able to meet their young people in school - they would need to find other ways to do it.

The team of YDWs had been used to having every single contact with a young person in a designated space in school, scheduled on the same day each week, with fixed appointments. These arrangements were easy to get used to and either a student would attend them, or they were absent from school. But suddenly, SW!TCH Minds mentors had to move to a model where, in order to continue to contact young people, they had to overcome a series of barriers.

First, they had to persuade schools to provide them with the contact details of the parents of each of the mentees. Then, they had to seek the permission of each parent to make contact with their child outside of school. Next, they then had to tailor their interactions to the needs of every single student. Each young person needed to be contacted in a different way, at different times, and the YDWs had to establish specific arrangements about how they would follow up and make their next contact with their mentees every time they interacted.

Soon, the YDW team was relying on phone calls, WhatsApp messages, texting and Zoom meetings to stay in touch with their students. Using a combination of apps such as Zoom, HouseParty and Kahoot, they ran online exercise classes, crafting sessions (making bracelets, using materials they delivered to the young people’s homes in advance), quizzes and even an online pamper evening to provide the young people with a social life, of sorts. And, eventually, they began to make socially distanced visits, when rules relaxed to allow it, to young people’s doorsteps, they took their students on socially distanced walks around the park and they organised safe ways for the young people to meet with their mentors in groups in public spaces. Later, they also started to run outdoor group activities such as rollerskating, boxing and hockey – all of which were run in a Covid-secure way.

Despite all of the challenges they faced, SW!TCH Minds managed to re-establish and then maintain contact with around 60% of their cohort of young people, more than 85% of whom were in touch with their mentor at least once a week, if not more often.

“Those who have engaged with us during lockdown, we probably have a better relationship with them now. We got a real sense from the young people who engaged with us [during this time] that they felt that we really cared: we phoned them, we checked up on them, we were there for them, they could unload on us, they could tell us how they were feeling. We’ve been able to prove to them that it wasn’t just lip service: we’re interested in how they’re doing. Even if it means ringing them more than they might want! This is all so brand new – some of the relationships were so new just before lockdown, so no-one knew how it would pan out, but there have been some real successes.”

Youth Development Worker

Unsurprisingly, it meant a lot to the young people, and it made an important impact on their lives. I asked some of the young people about this. One of them told me:

“It is an amazing experience, with incredible people. I wouldn’t be where I am right now without the help and support from LifeLine. They have motivated me and inspired me to do much more in my life and gave me more happiness.”

And another described the programme like this:

“SW!TCH is like a second family. You're able to bond with people and feel comfortable just being yourself. I think it's just easier to talk to people who are of similar ages”

And it wasn’t just the young people themselves who appreciated the lengths to which SW!TCH Minds went to ensure their mentoring wasn’t disrupted. One mother described how she felt about her daughter’s mentor:

“She has literally been a lifeline.”

But of course, what Lifeline has been providing is not even a drop in the ocean of need created by the pandemic. As the Guardian reports today,

“The pandemic has triggered increased pressure from gangs, through county line drug dealing networks, as well as sexual harassment, social workers reported. The most common problems remained the impact of a parent being subject to domestic violence and a parent’s poor mental health.”

We must prioritise our young people’s mental health, and we must do it now. Their futures depend on it.