Getting Used to the New Normal

This piece was written by Nik Harwood, Chief Executive, Young Somerset. “Never waste a good crisis” That’s an advice I learnt a long time ago from a very wise colleague who supported me in my development as a leader. When Covid-19 led us to lockdown, it quickly became apparent that at Young Somerset we had both a crisis, and an opportunity, on our hands – and that we needed to deal with both. We quickly established baseline methodologies for internal and external communications, mobilised staff resource and capacity to move our organisational and business infrastructure entirely into the digital realm and began discussions with senior staff about operational delivery capability and capacity. How were we going to continue to provide support to Somerset’s young people across all our work (open access youth work, skills development & enterprise, music, and mental health and wellbeing) – at a time when restrictions meant that any semblance of normality for them had disappeared. Young people were experiencing...
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Participation Matters – An Interview with Wellspring

This month we are thinking about the CYP IAPT principle of participation, and how important it is to get young people and families involved in local mental health services. Krissie Ivanova is a Children's Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) who works for our partner Wellspring Counselling, one of the newest members of the collaborative. Krissie has recently taken on the role of Participation Officer so we caught up with her to chat about her experience so far... First of all, congratulations on your new role! What has been your experience of participation in your service so far? Thank you! Wellspring is one of the most recent services to join the Community of Practice. As such, we have a long way to go before we fully adhere to the IAPT principles. My experience with participation within Wellspring has been limited. So far, we have been able to seek feedback from all our clients (both young people using the WP service, as well as young people and adults receiving...
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