Youth Mental Health Foundation

Youth Mental Health Foundation

Careers at Youth Mental Health Foundation

The Youth Mental Health Foundation C.I.C. is a Devon based not-for-profit organisation that delivers innovative and scalable projects to support young people’s mental health.

In 2015, Claire and Joel Sutton discovered their 11-year-old daughter was suffering from anxiety, depression and had been self-harming daily for two years. They recognised that alongside the professional help their daughter was receiving, there was a valuable contribution they as parents could make to support her recovery and dedicated themselves to this role.

Today their daughter Jade is a happy, healthy, and confident 16-year-old girl. Jade, her parents, a Chartered Psychologist, a learning architect and a family therapist developed an online course called The Horizon Plan to guide other parents and carers to support their child’s recovery.

As an ambassador for The Youth Mental Health Foundation, Jade has spoken to over 35,000 young people about mental health, visiting over 70 schools. She has been interviewed several times on the national TV news and radio about teen mental health. She was shortlisted for a National Diversity Award 2018 as a positive role model for young people. Most recently she submitted evidence to the UK Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group on self-harm in young people and has been invited to be a keynote speaker at a United Nations global conference on neurodiversity.

Our Current Projects

The Horizon Plan: Our online course guides parent to play a key role supporting the recovery of a young person who self-harms. The course recognises the extremely limited support available to families in crisis and leads parents to fill this gap. The methodology was developed in 2018 and was successfully piloted in a live format in 2019. In 2020 we produced the first module in digital format which is free to access through our website and is recommended by several NHS Recovery Colleges (including Devon Partnership NHS Trust). The online course currently has over two hundred parent students and the digital format allows us to deliver our support at extremely low cost. We are seeking funding to produce the remaining four modules in digital format. https://www.youthmentalhealthfoundation.org/onlinecourse

School Assembles & Workshops: To date, we’ve visited 80 primary and secondary schools in Devon and delivered assemblies and workshops to encourage and inspire young people and destigmatise mental health. The assemblies are delivered by 16-year-old Jade Sutton, who helps her young audience to Text Box: destigmatise mental health and find it easier to ask for help; Be resilient and understand that setbacks and disappointments are for learning and make us stronger; Accept, respect and celebrate our differences and our dreams; Build self-esteem and see an inspiring future for themselves. https://www.youthmentalhealthfoundation.org/believe-in-yourself-school-assembly

Behind the scenes