Empowering young people to create and implement a vision for a more resilient and mentally healthy future

Mind our Future Gwent (MoFG) is a £999,888.00 National Lottery Community Funded project delivered by ProMo Cymru and Newport Mind. Our project partners also include local Minds and youth services in Gwent, as well as wider stakeholders. Young people are employed to be involved in the project.

What was the problem?

In 2020, The National Lottery Community Fund brought together a Young People in the Lead Team to conduct research about what matters most to young people in Wales. The team interviewed 60 young people from across Wales and found that the most important things were mental health, employment and the environment. However, all aspects fed into mental health, which became a focal point for the Mind Our Future project. 

Mind Our Future is a £10 million grant programme to put young people in the lead so that they can imagine and create a more resilient and mentally healthy future for young people in Wales. As part of the programme, they wanted projects to design and develop new solution-focused approaches to young people’s mental health and resilience. 

As each area of Wales has different challenges, the Mind Our Future Grant funded projects to be run across different areas of Wales. 

Our approach

ProMo Cymru and Newport Mind work together to deliver the Mind Our Future Gwent project, covering Blaenau-Gwent, Caerphilly, Monmouthshire, Newport and Torfaen. 

We have partnered with the local youth services and local Minds in each authority area, as well as forming a group of stakeholders to help achieve the aims. 

Young people are at the heart of the project. We have recruited a group of 10-12 peer researchers aged 16-24 across Gwent to guide the project’s direction. These young people are paid to help us take forward the project. Initially, the group were referred to as Peer Researchers, but the group later decided that a more fitting name would be Peer Service Designers. 

Throughout the 5-year-project, the partnership aims to support young people to co-design and develop new solution-focused approaches to young people’s mental health and resilience using service design methodology. This follows the Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver process. 

Outcomes

The Discovery phase involved researching the needs of young people in Gwent and gaining a clear understanding of the support landscape. As to not reinvent the wheel, the project builds on what is already working in Gwent, identifies the gaps in services provided, and focuses on developing and improving these to support young people better.

The Mind Our Future Gwent Discovery Report outlined 7 key insights that were collected from research with 203 young people in Gwent ages 11-27. 

From this research, the Peer Service Designers have defined the problems and developed 4 key solutions to address the problems that were found in the discovery report. These are: 

• Campaigning and social media
• Staff training
• SPACE Panels
• Peer Support

These solutions have been further developed and we are being tested. We’ll learn from the tests, scale up the ideas, and deliver the solutions.