This week (5th-11th February) is Children and Young People’s Mental Health Week organised and run by Place2Be!
The theme this year is My Voice Matters which is about empowering young people to use their voices, share what matters to them, and encourage those around them to listen. This theme was developed alongside children and young people in Place2Be partner schools.
At No5, we know just how important it is for young people to share their voices, and be heard. That’s why we provide our 1:1 counselling and create safe spaces for young voices in our outreach work, including in our Young Ambassador Scheme.
Finding and Sharing Your Voice
Sharing your voice does not always have to mean talking in front of a large room of people, there are many ways you can share what matters to you!
You may find writing down your story or experience as a blog helpful, or perhaps sharing it in a video feels more comfortable. Even by filling out a few questions on a feedback form or survey, you have shared your thoughts and experiences which will help influence future decisions and change!
If you do want to share your voice through talking, you may find sharing your story or experiences with a few friends or family members to be a helpful place to start. Talking, especially about mental health, can feel scary so talking with people you trust may help you feel more comfortable. This may even help them to share their story too.
You may find it helpful to write out what you want to talk about, you could do this via note form, mind-maps or even a long piece of writing.
Place2Be have created a useful activity to help you identify what you may want to talk about and share with other people – find out more here!
Young People’s Voices at No5
Young Ambassadors
Our Young Ambassadors, share their experiences with other young people by creating video and blog content that is shared through our social media and newsletters.
In the video below, our Young Ambassadors share 10 things they wish parents knew about mental health.
Additionally, our Young Ambassadors help shape No5’s services by providing feedback on ways of working, reviewing and influencing the design and content of our printed and digital messages and referral form and help with creation of projects.
Lived Experienced Young Leaders
Our Operations Team is made up of our two Lived Experienced Young Leaders (LEYL’s), Carly Newman and Abbie Trussler. They are both young people, and former service users of No5, who share their lived experiences alongside their professional experiences and knowledge to develop No5’s services.
Our LEYL’s also support other young people, including our Young Ambassadors, to find and share their voices to help make a difference to the mental health support on offer locally. Carly leads on the Young Voices steering group in Reading, who have recently contributed to the Reading Borough Council’s Community Safety Partnership Strategy.
Young Trustee
With young people embedded throughout No5, we feel it’s also important for us to have the same representation and voice on our trustee board, part of our governance and decision making. We were delighted to welcome Ben Stone as our first young trustee in 2022!
Young People We Support
The voices of the young people we support are vitally important as they help us to ensure we are best supporting young people’s mental health and their thoughts and feedback help shape our future projects and service developments.
For example, during focus groups for our Restart Youth! Report, it was identified that young people did not always know what support was on offer and where to go for advice, so we developed our signposting project- where young people worked alongside a local web developer to scope, build and create our ‘Looking for Direction‘ signposting website.
You can hear from young people we have supported over the last 53 years on our No5 Stories page!
