Innovating Brook’s Wellbeing Offer

Dougie Boyd, Director of Education and Wellbeing at Brook, talks about how Brook is expanding and regenerating its current wellbeing offer to better support young people and their mental health. 

Here at Brook, we pride ourselves on being proactive at identifying and responding to young people’s needs. Sexual health and mental health have always been interlinked and Brook has always had a wellbeing offer in recognition of this. However, in recent years we’ve noticed a rise in mental health problems among the young people we support that go beyond our current capacity.  

That’s why, this year Brook is focusing on redeveloping our wellbeing offer.  

Equipping young people for life’s challenges has always been at the heart of what we do, and mental health forms a key part of this mission.  

Throughout this redevelopment, we will be working in partnership with young people, frontline professionals and mental health experts to make sure our offer is effective, needs-driven and service-user informed.  

Our plan for 2023 and beyond is to focus on the following key areas:

Expand current services

Our current wellbeing offer is centred on two key services: MyLife (early intervention) Programme and our counselling service.  

Since 2015, we have worked with around 2,800 young people through our MyLife programme. This programme empowers young people in secondary school to improve and manage their own mental health and wellbeing by developing their skills, confidence and knowledge.  

In 2023, we’ll be adapting MyLife for primary and neurodiverse young people. Our vision is to embed this programme into other therapeutic interventions in a step up/step down model so that each individual receives the level of support that they need. 

We will also be expanding our counselling service to new areas including exploring whether we could reach more young people through using Brook’s ‘Digital-First’ approach.  

Co-design, create and develop new services 

We plan to develop new wellbeing offers that will give primary and secondary aged young people the knowledge, skills and confidence to improve their own mental health, wellbeing and understanding based on their lived experience.  

Firstly, our new universal mental health literacy offer will be delivered through a variety of means including training for professionals, education sessions for young people and resources for schools. This offer will enhance the existing RSHE curriculum by encouraging young people to think about what it means to be mentally healthy.  

Secondly, we plan to develop and pilot a 6-8 week mental health promotion programme. This programme will encourage young people to understand their own strengths and assets and adopt a spirit of experimentation and exploration to learn how to improve and manage their mental health.  

Train and equip frontline staff 

Through new training courses, we will ensure all our frontline staff are confident and competent at recognising, responding and supporting young people who may have poor mental health or demonstrate signs of mental distress. This training will also equip staff to adopt a trauma-informed approach throughout all their interactions with young people.   

Develop new partnerships 

Partnerships with other local organisations have always been important to help us develop our understanding and work together towards the goal of supporting young people throughout life’s challenges. The area of mental health is no different; This year we will actively seek out opportunities to build effective partnerships with different organisations to help deliver better mental health outcomes for young people. With this in mind, the focus of our small grants programme this year is on wellbeing among neurodivergent young people.  

Explore social prescribing opportunities 

Using social prescribing would help make sure that young people get the support they need to manage and improve their own health and wellbeing. By partnering with other organisations, we hope to discover ways Brook can incorporate this into our service model.  

Do you work in mental health or a similar area and are interested in partnering with us? We’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch via communciations@brook.org.uk.