Evidenced based mental health and wellbeing resources made by young people for young people in the COVID-19 context

Young people have faced extensive disruption and challenge throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. There is good evidence to draw on to provide advice and support, but this is often not easily available to young people in accessible and engaging forms. As a joint proposal from the UKRI Emerging Minds and Triumph Networks, and supported by the wider Mental Health Networks, we are uniquely placed to draw on our cross-disciplinary, cross-sector, and lived experience networks to (i) draw together evidence on the mental health and wellbeing impacts of the pandemic on young people, (ii) identify priority areas where resources are needed, (iii) enable young people to develop resources that will be engaging and accessible to young people, and (iv) disseminate the outputs widely. Central aspects of our approach are (a) involvement of young people throughout, including creating opportunities for skills development and training to enable young people to be involved at all stages of designing and developing resources across a range of platforms, including (b) purposeful participation to address the needs of vulnerable groups who are likely to require tailored support and/or may face particular barriers to accessing support, and (c) collaboration with a wide range of partners who will both feed in insights and feed out outputs to ensure that the resources are disseminated widely through sources that young people trust. We are delighted to confirm that we have secured matched funding of £100,000 (Westminster Foundation) to maximise this opportunity to support young people at this unprecedented time.