We are extremely excited to visit Salford City Academy on Friday to launch our Mental Health Champions initiative.
YMCA Mental Health Champions is a comprehensive programme that aims to improve the mental health of young people aged 11 – 21.
This new programme offers three key services: Peer support programme in schools and the community Key adult education and awareness workshops and a Counselling service.
By using three interconnected strands, the project helps to raise awareness and destigmatise mental health issues, offers a fully quality assured counselling service and improves the knowledge and support that key adults, including teachers and parents, can offer the young people they work with.
Peer Support
Our peer support element recruits, supports and trains young volunteers to become mental health champions. Our champions have access to six developed workshops, each focusing on different areas of mental health, increasing awareness, removing stigma and advising on easy to use coping strategies.
Key Adults
The programme offers four workshops to help key adults support the young people they come in to contact with. The workshops deal with topics such as anger, anxiety, depression and self-harm, offering practical advice on how they can begin the conversation with young people and also how their actions can help have a positive impact.
Counselling
We recognise that peer support services should be offered as well as and not instead of professional services. We also know that it can be very difficult to access publicly funded counselling services and so Mental Health Champions offers a counselling service to those young people who need additional help but do not meet the referral criteria for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
