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Recently we joined Plan UK’s event to celebrate the end of their Young Health Programme UK (YHP UK), with stories and presentations from young people taking part about what they have accomplished through the programme. Over 5,500 young people have taken part in their youth-centred wellbeing programme, utilising a set of evidence-based actions to improve mental wellbeing. The programme ran across Greater Manchester and Cambridgeshire, with delivery partners running wellbeing activities with young people focused on the five ways to wellbeing.
We’ve been really pleased to work with Plan UK over the last four years, supporting the Community of Practice element of the programme. Following the release of our first #BeeWell headline findings in 2021, we teamed up with Plan-UK to explore our #BeeWell insights, particularly drawing on Plan-UKs expertise in exploring these themes with a gender lens.
The Community of Practice events were set up to explore learning, best practice and challenges in supporting young people’s mental health and wellbeing in Greater Manchester. Many of our #BeeWell Coalition of Partners got involved in these sessions, presented on their learning and even hosted us at their own spaces.
These sessions also sought to explore priorities identified in the #BeeWell dataset, and in this blog post we re-cap on just a few of the themes we covered from the #BeeWell data:
Good places to go
A headline finding reported many times in our #BeeWell data has been the decline in the number of young people feeling like they have good places to go. As young people get older, we see a decline from 79.3% of young people in Year 7 (2024 survey) feeling like they have good places to go, compared to 60.8% of Year 10s (2024 survey).
We set out to explore this in a community of practice session, looking at what makes a good place for young people and how that impacts wellbeing. Reclaim shared learning from their Our Space project to support discussions across this theme and how we can support the creation of good places for young people.
Social media use
In partnership with the Plan UK Young Health Programme in Cambridgeshire, we explored social media use and wellbeing. Researchers from The University of Manchester and University of Salford shared their findings on young people’s social media use and the connection to wellbeing.
If you’re looking to explore this theme in more detail, you can find similar in our previous #BeeWell webinar, here: #BeeWell Schools Webinar: social media use and wellbeing – #BeeWell.
Body image
Another of these sessions focused on body image, with training for attendees on how to support conversations with young people and to understand further how this topic impacts young people. It was also great to hear from YHP UK Youth Mental Health Ambassadors who spoke about this theme and answered questions about their Ambassador roles.
Originally, body image/appearance was not something we covered in our #BeeWell survey, but following this session and feedback from our partners and young people, we added a question into the survey on this for 2024/25 onwards.
Arts and culture
Hosted by our partners at 42nd Street, we explored the benefits of arts and culture on wellbeing. This was following our #BeeWell briefing on participation and arts, culture and wellbeing, found here: New briefing published: the impact PACE has on wellbeing – #BeeWell. Presentations took place from 42nd Street, a #BeeWell PhD researcher on their studies and Greater Manchester Combined Authority colleagues on the GM Creative Health Strategy. 42nd Street then ran a creative activity with attendees, who witnessed first-hand the impact these activities could have and reflected on how this approach could support work with their young people.
Further sessions held also looked more broadly at young people’s wellbeing, or explored themes not covered in the #BeeWell dataset. For example, we heard from Beacon Counselling, 42nd Street and Curious Minds on the barriers young people experience to access support, and Salford Foundation shared their work in a session on positive masculinity. We were also fortunate to hear from partners outside of Greater Manchester, like Kent Youth County Council, Fullscope (based in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough) and a cross-location session held by Kooth.
“The Young Health Programme’s partnership with #BeeWell has been instrumental in our work with professionals, ensuring that our sessions and training stay relevant to the mental health and wellbeing needs of young people in Greater Manchester, and that our work has a greater reach and impact” – Project Co-ordinator, Plan International UK.
Thank you to Plan International UK for inviting us to get involved and play a part in the Young Health Programme UK, and to all our fantastic partners who shared their learning and experience!
