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Unlocking support

A report that hears from children and young people about the barriers to mental health and wellbeing support

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This report and systems map is the result of a collaborative effort between New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, working in close partnership with funders, practitioners, schools, charities and, most importantly, children, young people and families.

Youth mental health reform is often discussed in silos. This project brought together over 440 organisations through the Coalition’s network, alongside funders and lived experience contributors, to build a shared view of how the system operates.

NPC’s role was to translate this collective insight into a practical tool for action. The systems map presents that perspective visually, capturing the experiences of children, young people, families, and professionals, and highlighting where coordinated change can have the greatest impact.

We are grateful to our funders, including BBC Children in Need, AD Charitable Trust, and The Rayne Foundation, and to the many partners who helped convene workshops, shape insights and ensure this work reflects the realities of those it seeks to serve.

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Our report and recommendations

Further details on what we heard from children and young people about the barriers they face in accessing support, including physically Disabled young people, Autistic young people, and young people who have been excluded from school, are in our full report.

In summary, we recommend that funders should:

Focus on local systems change: Solutions need to consider the whole system, not just individual services or programmes. But that’s impossible across the scale of the country. Taking a place-led approach to systems change allows a whole-of-system approach, tailored to a local area context.
Fund the connective tissue: Funders need to invest in infrastructure that enables collaboration. That might include signposting services, communities of practice, or data sharing platforms. They also need to change incentives in funding structures to incentivise collaboration.
Invest in evidence generation: Funders need to invest in evidence generation on what works, including at a systems level, not just at an individual programme level.

We also recommend that services should:

Be flexible and accessible: Focus on making communication, referral pathways and services accessible to young people including those from different backgrounds.
Embed lived experience: Services should recognise the expertise held by people with lived experience (and their support networks where appropriate) in service design and their workforce.

More details about what implementing these recommendations would involve is in our report.

Mapping the children and young people’s mental health system

The children and young people’s mental health system is enormous and complex. Depending on where you draw the boundary between mental health and wellbeing, and prevention and early intervention, it could encompass everything from acute in-patient services to after-school clubs and sports teams. The mental health and wellbeing of a young person is impacted by a vast range of services, organisations, and individuals in their life. Because of this, we have not sought to map the actors within the youth mental health system. Instead of what, we have focused on why.

We built a systems map to be a visual representation of the factors that influence whether a young person can access the youth mental health system and, if they can, the issues they experience with it, as described by children, young people, parents and professionals. Rather than focusing on individual services, these factors and the interactions between them shed light on key actors, pressures and relationships that shape the system as a whole.

The map is designed to support funders, providers and partners to identify leverage points, align around shared priorities and move from isolated interventions towards coordinated systems change.

This map summarises:

The factors that impact whether a young person is able to access support for their mental health/wellbeing.
And the factors that affect their experience once they access support.

Based on a series of workshops with young people, parents/carers, and mental health professionals, it sets out key reasons why a young person may or may not be able to access the support that they need.

This map cannot represent the specific experiences of any one young person. Instead, it seeks to present common themes heard thought this project, at a high-level. We recognise that some groups of young people will experience specific barriers to accessing support, that may not be included in the factors captured in this map.

Notes on using the systems map

The language in the map is neutral, reflecting the fact that an improvement in one factor can improve or reduce another, and the highly varied state of some of these factors across different local areas. It should be noted that this neutral language does not generally reflect the language used by children and young people, or their parent/carers when assessing the state of the system. With thanks again for the passionate, vulnerable and open way our contributors shared their experiences.
When using the map:
- You can filter by clicking different categories of factors listed at the bottom of the map.
- You can read more information about what we heard by clicking on any of the factors.

Definitions:

The below terms are used throughout the map factors and descriptions.

NHS CYPMHS

Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services delivered or funded by the NHS. These include a range of mental health related support services for children and young people, which can include:

· Mental health support teams (MHSTs) in schools and colleges.

· NHS-funded services from local mental health organisations, such as charities and social enterprises

· NHS CYPMHS – NHS provided services which were previously called children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

Mental health services

Where mental health services are referred to generally (rather than NHS CYPMHS), this includes all services that specialise in mental health support, regardless of whether or not they are delivered or funded by the .

Mental health professionals

Where mental health professionals are referred to generally (rather than NHS CYPMHS staff), this includes all practitioners specialised in mental health, regardless of whether or not they are delivered or funded by the NHS. This might include mental health support workers in schools, counsellors or psychologists. It does not include professionals in community-based services or non-mental health settings that are not trained to practice in mental health (e.g. youth workers or teachers).

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For our young contributors

Thanks to the open sharing and big ideas from the children and young people that contributed to this project, our report summarises how funders and services could support children and young people accessing mental health provision.

In addition to the full report below, we also produced a version for the children and young people that participated in this project.

Read our young contributors’ report.