The five-year MEAP programme involved testing and demonstrating the impact of different ways of working together, focusing on improving the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in Midlothian. We co-produced ideas with partners, children, young people, young adults and wider stakeholders. We ran Tests of Change to learn how to improve early intervention and preventative supports. We captured and shared learning from Tests of Change, demonstrating what works and what we can do differently in Midlothian to improve mental health. The following section is a summary of what we did.

The 100 Day Challenge, involved cross-system collaboration on three small-scale Tests of Change which were designed using a community-centred approach developed by Nesta. We focused on reducing stigma, building knowledge and confidence, and increasing access and availability of early intervention supports. 

19 organisations, 42 team members and 175 children and young people, parents and carers were involved. The approach we used was non-hierarchical, so everyone’s knowledge and insights were valued equally, regardless of background or professional status. Innovation was encouraged and allowed people to contribute without fear of blame or failure. The 100 Day Challenges helped us to catalyse our efforts to test ideas around improving mental health and wellbeing for Midlothian’s children and young people.

The Embedding Trauma-Informed Practice Test of Change tested a combination of three therapeutic approaches (yoga, mindfulness, art therapy) and the therapeutic impact of storytelling. Therapeutic interventions and storytelling were offered to over 1700 children and their families, and explored the use of PAX Good Behaviour game in schools. 702 front-line staff were trained in trauma-informed practice. 

Systems mapping research was conducted by Dartington Service Design Lab and MEAP between August 2020 and April 2021. The aim of the research was to understand the mental health services and supports available to children and young people in Midlothian, via the creation of an authority wide system map. We also wanted to understand how the system of mental health and wellbeing support operates from the point of view of children, young people and young adults. 49 children, young people and young adults were involved, via a series of workshops and one-to-one journey mapping interviews. The output from the mapping exercise provided new insights and concrete opportunities for change, helping us to identify tests of change as well as informing Midlothian-wide strategic planning for future years.

Conversations between multidisciplinary practitioners led to the Jigsaw Test of Change, concentrating on one geographical area of Midlothian. The Jigsaw Collaborative included four local voluntary sector organisations (Midlothian Sure Start, Home Link Family Support, Play Midlothian and Play Therapy Base) and the Midlothian Council Educational Psychology Team, with additional support from the local NHS CAMHS team and the Midlothian Community Lifelong Learning Team. Partners worked collaboratively to provide a range of training and support activities aimed at improving the mental health and wellbeing of children, their families and carers through increased provision coupled with quicker, easier access to support.  This more joined up way of working also provided primary school staff in the Test of Change catchment area with advice, information and tools to promote and engender good mental health amongst their pupil populations, and to help maintain their own wellbeing.  The supports and activities offered through the Jigsaw Collaborative were chosen as they have been evidenced to increase wellbeing and were not in place at all or not readily available in the area at the time. 269 young people, 43 parents/carers and 150 education staff benefited from supports, interventions and training opportunities provided over two years.

The Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers in Schools Test of Change explored a different approach to delivering health and wellbeing education programmes to children in primary schools that supported their transition to secondary school. The 18-month Test of Change involved delivering preventative topic-based Health and Wellbeing sessions in primary schools, follow-up group work and one-to-one sessions with children identified as needing further support. Awareness raising and information resources were created for children involved and their carers, supplementing the sessions given. Once school finished, a fun-packed summer programme was offered to all young people who engaged in 1:1s or the targeted groups, in preparation for the move to secondary school. Once at high school, young people who accessed targeted support in P7 then had follow-up sessions with their Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers in their S1 year to track progress, gather feedback and if necessary to signpost onto specialist services. 

MEAP allocated £30,000 for a youth-led Test of Change, providing an opportunity for young people to become agents of change in their own communities, by developing values and assets focused on positive self-growth to promote wellbeing. The Youth Test of Change was led by a core team of 8 young people and involved co-designing an open space where Midlothian young people can feel safe, have fun and make new friends. The space was named One Youth and over 200 young people used the space during the one-year pilot. 

As part of the Embedding Trauma-Informed Practice Test of Change, Storytelling was found to impact children positively. Staff and parental feedback showed that the children became more confident and more engaged with writing and drawing scenes from stories, as well as stimulating their imagination with stories and riddles. School staff also reported some improvement in literacy engagement. Staff and the Head Teacher reported that children who were not engaging in other activities at school were engaging in this activity, and it was reflected in their work in class. However, despite Storytelling being very well received and valued by staff, children and families, school staff capacity to support data collection hindered the ability to provide robust evidence of impact to support this initial feedback. During 2022, the MEAP Steering Group agreed that the Storytelling element of the Test of Change should be expanded for the remaining MEAP programme term, to allow further delivery and evaluation of the intervention, which became the Storytelling Test of Change. 168 storytelling sessions took place, involving 395 children and young people across three primary schools and one high school.

Collaboration was central to the work of the Midlothian Early Action Partnership. Across the systems mapping work and Tests of Change, we involved 3000 Children, young people and young adults, 927 front-line workers and professionals including 274 education staff, and 86 parents and carers. Steering group and strategic partners working across 26 different organisations and services were also involved.

Young people and young adults were involved across the Tests of Change in a variety of ways, ranging from co-producing work with peers and adults, to participation and engagement with supports and activities. More details on these can be seen in the individual Tests of Change pathway sections.

From the start, the Midlothian Early Action Partnership (MEAP) Steering Group met regularly, building a strong foundation of trust and respect between partners. Having a clear vision and shared aims and desired outcomes for the programme helped to keep us focused, especially in times of uncertainty and resource constraints. We felt this time invested was vital to the success of the programme. 

Having a shared budget for the MEAP programme felt empowering. It removed much of the usual power-imbalance that comes with some partners controlling budgets that other partners have to bid for. This was exciting, challenging and uncomfortable for those involved, but the rewards were worthwhile: more open conversations, genuine shared decision-making, and collective accountability and action.

The empowerment the MEAP programme created through its condition-priming and emphasis on relational factors meant people felt able to try out things and to work together in different ways, without fear of failure. This provided new opportunities for recognising and developing connections between people, roles, services and processes. Through MEAP, partners felt a shared ownership and responsibility for reflecting and acting on the learning from Tests of Change. 

During the MEAP programme lifespan, partners and stakeholders involved felt the impact of budget cuts, struggles in recruitment of staff and increasing demand for their services. This felt challenging for everyone involved and led to conflicts between responding to crises and prioritising early intervention and preventative work.

This section summarises key learning across the programme, with learning from individual tests of change demonstrated in the individual reports.

As a partnership, we learned how to work together differently to build trusting relationships. Having a shared budget for the MEAP programme enabled more genuine shared decision-making, built upon collective accountability and action. In the early stages, the MEAP Steering Group focused on building up relationships across all members, recognising the need for trust in co-production. This significant time investment contributed to gaining a clarified and shared vision, aims and desired outcomes for the programme. A specific example of gaining strong collaboration is from the Jigsaw Test of Change's partnership between the Third Sector Consortium, made up of four organisations, and Educational Psychology. This was a new and improved way of working together and it's important not to underestimate the amount of effort and commitment put in by all partners involved. Regular meetings provided opportunities for discussion and reflection within safe spaces, at both Steering Group and test of change levels. 

Through the MEAP programme, we gained new opportunities for recognising and developing connections between people, roles, services and processes. MEAP created conditions that empowered people to try out things and to work together in different ways. The MEAP programme involved trying out ideas within an already complex mental health system, with many components that interact with one another. Multiple interventions running in parallel meant that the dots connected in ways that produced new insights that might have been lost otherwise. 

The learning from the mapping exercise brought together what was already known about current mental health needs and supports at the time, with new insights and concrete opportunities for change. The output from the mapping work has informed Midlothian-wide strategic planning for improving children and young people's mental health. The MEAP Steering Group input has also been pivotal in the early planning stages of a key systemic change - the development of a Midlothian-wide ‘single point of access’ for those seeking support.

We have gained insights into what works for young people and what we can do differently, accruing further evidence on the importance of co-design and co-production with children, young people and adults who support them. For example, for our youth-led tests of change, our original plan was for young people to be invited to submit ideas, before offering them support to refine their proposals into bids for funding, with a panel of young people deciding on the winning bids. When we experienced challenges in getting engagement from young people, we had open conversations about what would work best for them. This feedback resulted in our change of approach that led to the One Youth Test of Change, co-developed by young people.  

The Storytelling Test of Change evolved in response to what children said they wanted and needed, with the next phase including a transition approach that was trialled with primary and high school classes. This approach was a direct result of feedback from children who had been involved in the earlier test of change asking for the storyteller to ‘visit’ them after they moved to high school. It was felt that this could provide a supportive factor in the often-difficult transition period.

Children and young people learned about wellbeing and mental health and gained the knowledge, confidence and skills to manage their own wellbeing. Several tests of change focused on reducing stigma, building knowledge and confidence and increasing access and availability of early intervention supports.

We learned that it is possible to have a strategic focus and in principle commitment to system change, but when resources are stretched and individuals are stressed and processes are siloed, it becomes very difficult to maintain this commitment. Staffing resources were redirected to responding to the pandemic and the after-effects, which made continued involvement in programmes like MEAP less likely. The apparent reduction or withdrawal of some members’ commitment tested trust in relationships and at times felt it impacted on the group motivation and progress within the programme. Although difficult, we learned that sometimes people and services have other priorities that we as a partnership were unable to compete with – and should not expect to. 

From an evaluation perspective, we experienced challenges in capturing evidence and feedback throughout the Tests of Change, particularly during the pandemic lockdowns and immediately afterwards. Receiving data and written feedback was a significant challenge due to additional pressures on time and expectations of the curriculum. A big learning here is to ensure sufficient resources to do monitoring and evaluation are factored into any future programmes.

The National Lottery provided Learning Support, as part of the Early Action System Change programme. Those involved all agree that the learning support has been immensely helpful in highlighting common themes across all Early Action System Change programmes and sharing knowledge on our experiences and what we have learned. The learning support included in-person learning events, ‘Huddle’ sessions and webinars, and regular ‘Action Learning’ sets. In the final learning support Huddle on sustainability, we explored the concept of sustainability and its different layers: environmental sustainability; sustaining the activity; sustaining individual learning and sustaining collective or systemic learning. We considered what actions are needed to increase sustainability and what that looks like for some of the different partnerships; the insights were interesting and hopeful. 

We are seeing a gradual shift of focus towards early action and on the connections between parts of the system. 

MEAP has contributed towards a gradual shift of focus towards early action and preventative measures by regularly reporting findings and highlighting areas of concern or priority to the Midlothian Mental Health Strategic Planning group and the GIRFEC Board. As a result, decision-makers have been more engaged in focused conversations about prevention and early intervention. More widely, relationships and connections between professionals across Midlothian have improved over the last five years, creating more opportunities for cross-agency collaboration and partnership working. 

While a shift towards prevention and early intervention is observed and this is viewed as a priority for new ways of working, there is still some way to go for this view to be demonstrated through action across the wider system.

We have built new working relationships between people and across services.

New collaborations started between people and services who hadn’t collaborated together before, or for a long time. For example, Educational Psychology and Third Sector colleagues in schools; Police Scotland and One Youth; people involved in the 100 Day Challenges.

The majority of people involved in MEAP tests of change reported they had developed skills and knowledge to meaningfully involve children, young people, families and carers in local change efforts.

Listening to what young people told us and working together with them has been at the centre of the MEAP approach and of several of the Tests of Change. In particular, One Youth would not have existed without young people generating the idea and committing their time to it over several years. Young people demonstrated the importance of a dedicated space for young people to be themselves and the benefit this has for their mental health. They approached the question of early mental health intervention in a different way to professionals and provided evidence that other young people valued their approach. In light of this, key Midlothian decision-makers are working with young people to find a space for One Youth to continue. That adults can see the value of young people’s ideas and experiences in this arena has strengthened youth involvement in other areas. For example, young people involved in One Youth contributed to the development of the new Local Area Development Plan in relation to spaces and places for young people across Midlothian.

We have explored different approaches to supporting children and young people during transitions.

Transitions are a crucial part of a young person’s life, where they experience significant change, and we know that it is important to put in supportive factors before and during this change. During MEAP this came up as a priority, both from young people and adults. The MEAP programme identified several approaches to supporting children and young people through transition, which fit in with existing provision and which could be sustainable if planned. Partners worked together to develop these approaches and took the opportunity to try different creative things and learn from them, such as storytelling in secondary schools. With the Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers in Schools Test of Change, we focused on building health and wellbeing knowledge and tools in preparation for transition to high school for 250 young people. This work also links in with the Single Point of Access model, ensuring both early and preventative supports are in place. 

We have prioritised Trauma-Informed Practice in our work.

The Trauma-Informed Practice Test of Change contributed to staff gaining a better understanding of adopting trauma-informed practices, with 702 front-line staff receiving trauma training. During the second year of the programme, NHS Lothian introduced a wider training programme across Lothians. This Test of Change built commitment to the trauma-informed approach and positioned the workforce in Midlothian to gain maximum benefit from this. Implementing trauma-informed practice is now a priority action for the GIRFEC Partners.

Adults provide more effective and timely support to children, young people and young adults experiencing mental health challenges.

Through the MEAP programme, 168 trusted adults were trained in Mental Health First Aid during the first year, including parents, carers and teachers. All of those trained reported their confidence to support young people increased as a result of the training. All tests of change contributed to increasing adults' awareness and knowledge about how to support children, young people and young adults with their mental health. Examples include the Jigsaw Collaboration training for education staff and sessions with parents and young people. Partners also reported greater knowledge of what mental health and wellbeing is and how we can better support it, in ourselves and others. 

Creating the spaces, mechanisms and relationships for system change.

We learned that the system doesn’t change in itself, we need to create the spaces, mechanisms and relationships for this to happen. Of the utmost importance throughout our learning is the critical need to create and maintain spaces and places for reflection, connection and collaboration. All tests of change created spaces for emotional connectedness and permission in feeling different emotions. Jigsaw gave professionals the space to try working together in different ways. One Youth was a space for young people to talk, share and have fun together. Trauma-informed Practice involved various therapeutic approaches and explored the use of storytelling as a tool to support emotional wellbeing, also creating the space for these to happen.

We continue to build our evidence base on what works in Midlothian.

Our work to date is helping to build an evidence base of ways of working across our system that contribute to the improved mental health and wellbeing of Midlothian’s children and young people. We have been instrumental in demonstrating the need and potential for a ‘Single Point of Access’ to mental health support for children, young people and families, and we continue to influence planning in this area through the strategic involvement of MEAP partners in the Midlothian Children and Young People’s Mental Health Strategic Planning Group. The systems mapping and research that was carried out as part of the MEAP programme continues to be used to progress improvement activities that directly relate to MEAP outcomes.

We work more effectively across services and sectors.

The MEAP Steering Group is a successful model of collective leadership. Investment in time spent together developing a shared vision resulted in high levels of trust and shared values that enabled us to have open conversations. Clearly defined aims went a long way to ensuring commitment for the duration of the programme. These relationships and ways of working have extended to other groups and networks with MEAP membership. For example, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Strategic Planning Group, counts five MEAP partners in its membership. 

We are committed to building iterative learning spaces into our work.

MEAP created conditions that empowered people to try out things and to work together in different ways, without fear of failure. As a learning programme, it removed pressures to succeed in the traditional sense. For example, a youth group that used One Youth joined the core team for feedback sessions and started planning other ways for them to collaborate on improvement programmes. Spaces for reflection and emotional connection can save time, energy resources in the future. Time for people to come together and work collaboratively maintains good wellbeing and supports long-term positive mental health change. 

The Embedding Trauma Informed Practice Test of Change (TOC) was added to the original Early Action and System Change Project application at the request of the National Lottery, in order to extend the age range of beneficiaries covered within the bid. NHS Lothian Health Improvement Funding (HIF) was secured to co-finance the delivery of this element of the programme.

The aim of this Test of Change was to build a trauma informed community by 2021 to support positive mental health and wellbeing in Midlothian's children and young people by:

• Focusing on primary aged young people who had experienced childhood trauma.
• Training multi-agency staff and volunteers to be trauma-informed, using their skills and knowledge to support the development of resilience in children and young people and their families.
• Devising a menu of activities and interventions to support young people to improve their mental health and wellbeing.

Initial planned outcomes

During the period 2018 to 2022, Midlothian Sure Start worked with teachers, children and their families from nine local primary schools to implement trauma informed training for staff and also test three therapeutic approaches namely mindfulness, yoga and art therapy which are all supported by a wide evidence base and to test out the therapeutic impact of storytelling. In the final year Midlothian Sure Start had the opportunity to conduct a small-scale trial of the PAX Good Behaviour Game which has an extensive research base around the world but has not previously been tested in Scotland.

Resilience Screenings and Trauma Training

Midlothian Sure Start offered trauma training to primary school staff in 2018-2020.

The organisation began with plans to screen the “Resilience” film providing information of the public health study highlighting the link to ACEs and health outcomes, relating this to the behaviours presenting to the workforce (education, local authority and voluntary sector) and what may be happening in the wider life of children and families. 

The project initially aimed to train approximately 100 local front-line staff/ volunteers but actually trained 702 front-line teachers, educational staff, other local authority staff, third sector staff and volunteers. The project expanded to cover the following elements:

• Various screenings of the film “Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope”, providing information about the links between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and poorer health outcomes, relating this to the behaviours presenting in the classroom and to local authority and third sector service providers.
• Training/workshops (delivered by two Clinical Psychologists) exploring “ACES in a school context”, designed to support participants to take a trauma informed approach, using their skills and local knowledge to support the development of resilience in children and young people and their families in their care.
• NES Trauma Training (funded by the Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership), for those working with children and young people, including schools, children’s’ services and the voluntary sector.
• A Reflective Practice Group for Education staff – set up following feedback from the NES trauma training indicated a need for such a resource.
• Therapeutic skills training for primary school staff, focused on the following areas:
  • Reflection on the ACES tree.
  • Attachment: secure and insecure, and how it relates to classroom presentations and behaviours.
  • Resilience.
  • Developmental play: the impact of ACES.
  • What the child brings to school.
  • Trauma experience vs living in a traumatic world.
  • Containment: what schools offer to create containment.
• Building Resilience Programme- a primary school resource promoting awareness and understanding of good mental health and wellbeing amongst pupils, families and staff.

Pax Good Behaviour Game

In the last quarter of 2021 Midlothian Sure Start offered the PAX GBG (Saunders 1969) (Embry 2020) as an exploratory pilot intervention in partnership with Queens University Belfast and the PAXIS Institute, America. Baseline testing in self-regulation and resilience was undertaken in 9 primary schools (5 intervention and 4 control). The PAX program was run for 10 weeks after 6 teachers had received trained locally through Queens University Belfast.

One of the main attractions of the PAX GBG is that it brings fun back into learning in the classroom through the use of quirky, intangible rewards for the group. The rewards in the form of Granny’s Wacky Prizes (GWP) are invented rather than purchased fun, which aims to strengthen pupils’ imagination and self-regulation. The programme has an extensive research base.

Therapeutic approaches

Children and families were offered the opportunity to participate in the following activities during the period 2018 to 2022:

• Storytelling – to help primary school pupils develop tools and strategies that could improve their emotional wellbeing and mental health.
• Emotional Regulation Group x2 –using yoga and art therapy techniques to support emotional regulation.
• Youth Mindfulness Programme for 7–11-year-olds – comprising 16 sessions, the first six develop the foundations of mindfulness: embodying present moment awareness, followed by an exploration of how mindfulness can help achieve happiness by being present for the good things in life, and help to build resilience to cope with stress and difficult thoughts and emotions. The programme ends with the cultivation of kindness and exploring questions of purpose and agency (youthmindfulness.org.uk).
• Yoga - an 8-week course for children designed to help down-regulate, increase ability to self-regulate emotions, increase bodily awareness, build resilience, and to improve areas such as focus and attention, proprioception, mood, improved posture and breathing quality. An adult yoga course was offered at Mayfield Family Learning Centre and was delivered online during the first COVID 19 lockdown.
• Art Therapy – 121 sessions delivered by qualified therapists to support children (and parents/carers in some instances) in coping with the impact of trauma and difficult experiences.

Trauma training

Midlothian Sure Start had initially aimed to train c100 local front-line staff and volunteers using existing Health Improvement Funding, but was ultimately able to train 702 front-line teachers, education and other local authority staff, third sector staff and volunteers thanks to the match funding provided through the Embedding Trauma-Informed Practice Test of Change – see table on the right for breakdown.

 Therapeutic Skills

72 education staff at 3 primary schools benefitted from therapeutic skills training.

Building Resilience Training

Staff at 4 primary schools undertook training in January 2021.

Reflective Practice Group

A group of 9 home/school support staff, play therapists, art therapists and family support workers attended Reflective Practice between September 2019 and February 2020.

Children, Families and Carers

Therapeutic interventions and storytelling were offered to over 1700 children – see table below for breakdown.

Youth Mindfulness Programme

20 children form P4/5/6 at one primary school participated in the programme in two groups.

One primary school (Newtongrange) contributed additional funding to enable the programme to be offered across the whole school, including to staff. It was delivered in school and online when COVID 19 led to lockdowns. Another primary school offered lunchtime drop-in sessions with an average of 12 pupils attending over the 8-week timeframe.

Yoga

Two primary schools each ran a group with 6 children in each. The programme offered to adults at the Mayfield Family Learning Centre ran an in-person group with average 4 adults and a 1:1 adult Yoga course for 8 weeks. During lockdown the Test of Change delivered two courses on YouTube, 1 for adults and 1 for families receiving 1890 views on YouTube, 40 likes on YouTube and 6 re-posts on Facebook.

Storytelling

Storytelling started in Mayfleld Primary School and Woodburn Primary school in 2018/2019. Two primary schools (Woodburn and Mayfield) chose to deliver the Storytelling across their school populations and a third (Lawfield Primary School) delivered it to classes in P 1, 3, 4 and 7.

140 children aged 3-5 and their parents invited to attend Storytelling sessions in shared learning week. Storytelling sessions were delivered online (YouTube) throughout 2020-21 with average quarterly viewing statistics of 2192, and 111 likes on YouTube.

Art Therapy

Sessions were delivered to a small number of children on a 1:1 basis (on average 4-6 children/families a year) and dyadic (parent and child) basis in 3 primary schools. One therapist offered a small Yoga and Art Therapy group to pupils in Danderhall Primary School as well as providing 1:1 Art Therapy which embedded Yoga as a means to aid self-regulation. During lockdown the Test of Change delivered ‘letterbox sessions’ - art materials sent to children and families, and correspondence via post and telephone calls, including regular phone call check-ins.

Resilience Grants

Midlothian Sure Start trialled the concept of a small “resilience fund” to highlight that there is not a one size fits all approach to supporting resilience and that supporting a passion or goal or providing a creative outlet can make a very important contribution to developing resilience in a child experiencing adversity. £9000 was awarded to 42 grant applications benefiting 104 children at a cost per child of £86.53.

A range of mechanisms were used to gather data: Evaluation forms were completed for Mindfulness, Yoga, and the trauma informed practice. Case studies and feedback from teachers and practitioners were also gathered for these and the other interventions. Children made drawings to represent their views and samples of these are included within this report.

The project experienced a range of challenges gathering feedback on the impact of interventions delivered. Support was often required from already very busy teaching staff to help gather data, and the difficulties were only exacerbated by the emergence of COVID 19 and all of the associated restrictions.

This feedback indicated that the range of interventions were all useful in helping children to feel engaged and also proved useful not only in engaging children in the activity but in other school activities or in helping them learn wellbeing activities.

Mindfulness: Children who completed evaluation forms for the Mindfulness groups reported that:

• ‘When I practice mindfulness, I end up feeling happier’.
• Children strongly agreed that mindfulness helps them stay calm when they are angry or upset
• Over half of children said that they had used mindfulness strategies outside of the class when they had been upset and it had helped.
• 90.9% of the children strongly agreed that mindfulness helped them to focus on their work

     “There was a notable effect on children before and after the sessions and drop-in and the children were generally able to identify feelings of calm and relaxation within themselves after they had practiced mindfulness.”

Anna Shepherd, Mindfulness Practitioner at Newtongrange Primary School 2019-2020

The approach included the supply and use of mindfulness journals for pupils to use during lockdown. This proved helpful not only to children but to parents: 

" Parents felt that it supported their children to focus on the present in a better way, helped them to feel relaxed and less worried and it also supported bonding between those parents and children who decided to do the activities together.” 

When children were asked what they would say to a child from another class when asked if they should go to a mindfulness class comments included, “I would say to them “go” because I have been really calm lately” and “it is fun because you relax.”

One therapist commented that, “... there was a notable effect on children before and after the sessions and drop-in and the children were generally able to identify feelings of calm and relaxation within themselves after they had practiced mindfulness.”

“The Head Teacher shared feedback from a pupil who was enthused about the mindfulness sessions he had done with Anna and was able to articulate how mindfulness was helping him manage a personal issue that he has, and how he really felt the benefit of using mindfulness.”

Katie Hayes, Educational Psychologist

Yoga: Group feedback indicates that on the whole, the children engaged very well with the content of the yoga course. The P1 and P2 group found it slightly more challenging to keep their attention throughout class. Learning from the group was that it would be best to avoid family members in the same group as this had affected the dynamic of this group. The P3 & P4s were particularly well engaged and there was less disruptive behaviour in this group. The calm atmosphere allowed for the children to find much more stillness and peace during class and as the weeks progressed the therapist noticed they were a lot quieter and relaxed after the final yoga nidra deep relaxation. When the children were asked how they felt after class the words that came up the most were:

“Joyful, calm, peaceful, happy”. Some of the children asked me why they could not have yoga every week as they loved it so much.”

Storytelling: Staff and the Head Teachers report that children value the input, and they report that children who are not engaging in other activities at school are engaging in this activity, and it has been reflected in their work in class.

Teachers reported that they found the sessions to be very rewarding as they supported their own skills in storytelling with my class and they helped pick up on some of the emotions that the child was experiencing in class.

Trauma Training: All staff who have attended indicated that the training was closely matched to developing skills in their role. Survey questionnaires indicates that on average 90% of staff have experienced a shift in their thinking about how they would respond to challenging behaviour, building relationships and being open to new techniques to use to deal with childhood adversity. Staff reported that they understood the impact of trauma on the child and were able to consider more suitable adjustments that could be made in their practice and could explain the impact on the child when advocating for appropriate services for the child. They developed a number of actions for themselves which included: “Keep working on relationships and “connections”, Thinking about how they could be a protective factor for the child and/or considering who was a protective factor for the child and they were also aware of having realistic expectations of the children they were teaching.

Art Therapy: Teachers, parents and pupils reported a positive impact from art therapy, which had a reported longitudinal impact, for example,  "A year on, J is much more settled, engaging in and accessing his learning, beginning to make progress, and making great strides in managing his emotions”.

Reflective Practice: For most school support staff, reflective practice was a new experience. Those participating expressed the impact of listening to heartbreaking stories on themselves and noted the degree of trauma that has been experienced by families, and how difficult it can be to switch off from this. Staff valued coming together as many posts can feel isolated. They noted a wish to share their experiences with peers, to consider self- care and self- awareness, and to understand the process and benefit of reflective practice. There was a wish to share ideas and theory. The group supervisor reported on the benefit of staff been keen to support each other, and to bring helpful reflections and ideas for their working which participants state has been valuable.

Pax Good Behaviour Game: The programme began with children designing their “ideal classroom” during which activity they are guided to decide what constitutes acceptable behaviour - what they wanted to see, hear, do, and feel more of or less of in their classroom.

The game teaches pupils to start and stop, and how to delay gratification to achieve a bigger goal, driven on by winning rewards and receiving positive reinforcement. These intangible awards of recognition and a sense of achievement are reinforced by reflections on their individual and collective actions. Pupils support each other for group success, and this enhances their self-satisfaction and motivation to continue to improve their methods of learning.

The PAX GBG has a wide research base that proved it is useful in supporting the improvement of self-regulation which in turn supports learning within the classroom setting.

Pupils and staff reported that they enjoyed the programme, for example, a school teacher saying “I prefer this behaviour game to the one my school currently uses but it is difficult to institute as a single classroom in a primary school.” 

One P3/P4 Class Teacher reported that the children loved to use Tootle Notes to say something positive to their classmate. Tootle notes are designed to help promotes Peace, Productivity, Health and Happiness.

Teachers gain knowledge, confidence and skill to support children

The trauma informed project delivered trauma training to 371 primary and secondary school staff (including a school for children with Additional Support Needs). This programme included the screening of the film Resilience, Clinical Psychologist facilitated workshops to help participants understand how to incorporate their learning into their work with children and young people, workshop training on the "jigsaw child" by staff from Play Therapy Base and the Building Resilience programme for some schools.

143 staff reported an increase in their knowledge around childhood adversity and trauma in a survey on the impact of this training. 

All respondents indicated that the training was closely matched to developing skills useful for their role, with over 90% experiencing both a shift in their thinking about how they would respond to challenging behaviour and building relationships, and a new openness to using the techniques learned to help address issues relating to childhood adversity. The majority reported an increase in understanding and all of respondents reported a willingness to change their practice.

Children and young people increase their knowledge and confidence around their own wellbeing

Youth Mindfulness

Children who participated strongly agreed with the statement that ‘When I practice mindfulness, I end up feeling happier’. Children also strongly agreed that mindfulness helps them stay calm when they are angry or upset and over 50% of children said that they had used mindfulness strategies outside of the class when they had been upset and it had helped.

Children strongly agreed that mindfulness helped them to focus on their work/concentrate which shows the potentially far-reaching impact of this practice within the classroom environment.

Comments from children when asked what they would say to a child from another class when asked if they should go to a mindfulness class included: “I would say to them “go” because I have been really calm lately” and “it is fun because you relax.”

Anna Shepherd, Mindfulness Practitioner at Newtongrange Primary School 2019-2020, commented:

“There was a notable effect on children before and after the sessions and drop-in and the children were generally able to identify feelings of calm and relaxation within themselves after they had practiced mindfulness.”

Parents felt that the mindfulness journals used during COVID-19 supported their children to focus on the present in a better way, helped them to feel relaxed and less worried and it also supported bonding between those parents and children who decided to do the activities together.

Yoga and Art Therapy

The testing of Art Therapy and Yoga was more limited in scale.

Most children enjoyed the yoga activity and reported that they practiced the tools outwith the sessions.

11 out of 12 children said that they enjoyed yoga and would recommend it to a friend. They said that it was fun and helped to calm them. Feedback included: “This is really calm: I want to do this all the time” and  “poses help me relax”.

7 out of 12 children reported that they strongly agreed that they would like to practice yoga at home, 3 somewhat agreed and 2 children did not plan to do so. 10 out of 12 children reported that yoga helps them to stay calm when angry, with 1 somewhat agreeing and 1 child disagreeing. 9 children reported that they used the tools learnt when upset with 2 somewhat agreeing while 1 child did not agree. All children reported improved concentration as a result of learning yoga.

Storytelling

The use of metaphor in storytelling provides opportunities for self-expression in third person in imaginative, comfortable way. Storytelling also creates a space where children can explore and develop their creativity and build positive relationships, connection, and feelings of safety and calm that promote good wellbeing. Joy, excitement and learning to predict ‘what happens next’ are important elements of the Storytelling process. The use of metaphor in storytelling provided opportunities for self-expression in an imaginative and comfortable way.

Storytelling was found to impact the children positively, with staff and parental feedback showing that the children became more confident and more engaged with writing and showed some improvement in literacy engagement. This was further evidenced by the fact that on a range of occasions over the course of the project children started to write their own stories and riddles and performed them for their friends, classmates, parents and community with one group putting on a performance at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh.

Staff reported that children who did not engage with other activities did respond well to storytelling, and it has had a positive impact on their other work in class.

Trauma Informed Practice

66 of the 143 survey respondents provided feedback on what they would do differently. Feedback included “taking the time to checking in with every pupil” and being more aware of the needs of quiet or withdrawn children.

School staff recognized the importance of taking a trauma-informed approach and had an appetite to learn practical skills for application in the classroom. This additional learning was supported through the provision of:

• The “the jigsaw child” training delivered into 3 primary schools
• The PAX Good Behaviour Game (a behavioural management program) in 8 primary schools
• The provision of reflective practice
• The Building Resilience Programme.

School staff reported that these interventions helped them have greater understanding and learn new tools to support children.

Storytelling

Storytelling creates a space where children can explore and develop their creativity and build positive relationships, connection, and feelings of safety and calm that promote good wellbeing. Joy, excitement and learning to predict ‘what happens next’ are important elements of the Storytelling process. The use of metaphor in storytelling provided opportunities for self-expression in an imaginative and comfortable way.

Storytelling was found to impact the children positively, with staff and parental feedback showing that the children became more confident and more engaged with writing and showed some improvement in literacy engagement. Staff reported that children who did not engage with other activities did respond well to storytelling, and it has had a positive impact on their other work in class.

“The children benefitted by becoming enthused and immersed...and produced some excellent work.” - Primary School Teacher

Tim (the Storyteller) observed how children developed from listening to the stories to creating their own stories, saying:

“We reached a point where that [storytelling] space was very much ready for the children to take centre stage for their own storytelling.”

Youth Mindfulness Programme

Mindfulness provided children with the opportunity to explore how mindfulness could help them be happier by being present for the good things in life and also help them to be more resilient and cope with stress and difficulty, in particular difficult thoughts and emotions. It also focused on the cultivation of kindness, first to oneself and then towards others. Finally, the children explored questions of purpose and agency.

The Project introduced mindfulness to approximately 800 pupils giving them the opportunity to learn some new tools and techniques to keep calm. Approximately 90% of pupils that completed the evaluations at all the schools agreed that mindfulness helped them to concentrate, over 70% overall (91% in one school) of pupils said that practicing mindfulness made them happier and helped them to stay calm when angry. Over 50% of pupils agreed that they used mindfulness strategies outside of the class when they had been upset.

Yoga

Most children enjoyed Yoga classes and reported that they practiced the tools outwith the sessions. 11 of the 12 children who completed an evaluation provided feedback said that they enjoyed yoga and would recommend it to a friend. They said that it was fun and helped to calm them. Feedback included: “This is really calm: I want to do this all the time” “poses help me relax.” 9 of the 12 children reported that they used the tools learnt when upset with another 2 of them reporting that they did so to some degree. All respondents reported improved concentration as a result of learning yoga.

Mindfulness and yoga were completely new activities to the schools they were offered in. The sessions provided new opportunities for the participants to learn tools to support healthier means of expression and promote self-regulation.

Art Therapy

Regular art therapy sessions provided opportunities for self-expression to 13 children using creative media without the need for verbal communication in safe therapeutic environment.

Feedback from 1:1 sessions:

“Both J and B benefitted from an extended period of 1:1 art therapy. B engaged really well with the therapist and the opportunity to have 1:1 support enabled him to talk about his emotions in a safe environment, when he was struggling to engage with other adults in his life and experiencing lots of negative attention from adults in authority. B expressed his enjoyment of these sessions and voiced that he found them helpful. His mum also reported that they were beneficial in supporting B's emotional regulation. B managed a successful transition to high school in the summer.”

“J was in a very difficult place while accessing the sessions, with great turmoil going on in his home life. This impacted on his ability to access the therapy initially, but he did have some successful sessions and was able to engage and begin to explore his feelings. J loves art and finds creative pursuits a positive outlet. J found having a quiet, calm space in which to open up very beneficial as he was finding the classroom environment very overwhelming and challenging. A year on, J is much more settled, engaging in and accessing his learning, beginning to make progress, and making great strides in managing his emotions.”

Children and young people are better able to fulfil their potential for learning, life and work

Storytelling was demonstrated to create a space where children can explore and develop their creativity and build positive relationships, connection, and feelings of safety and calm that promote good wellbeing. Joy, excitement and learning to predict ‘what happens next’ are important elements of the Storytelling process. The use of metaphor in storytelling provided opportunities for self-expression in an imaginative and comfortable way.

Storytelling was found to impact the children positively, with staff and parental feedback showing that the children became more confident and more engaged with writing and showed some improvement in literacy engagement. This was further evidenced by the fact that on a range of occasions over the course of the project children started to write their own stories and riddles and performed them for their friends, classmates, parents and community with one group putting on a performance at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh.

Staff reported that children who did not engage with other activities did respond well to storytelling, and it has had a positive impact on their other work in class.

While storytelling was shown to help children in a range of ways and was correlated with improvements in pupil's literacy skills and increase self-confidence, evaluative evidence in this part of the project was mostly based on observations of participants, including children, teachers and parents. This provided a rich collection of quotes and assessments of impact. This evidence provided clear indications of the positive impact of the storytelling on children's wellbeing. However, the collection of hard data evidence was hampered by the COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent restriction, and the many related staffing issues of the time. In addition, the evaluation process was mostly retrospective, making the Test of Change more difficult to determine. Consequently, a more rigid evaluative regime, which provides a clear baseline, and a degree of continuous assessment and feedback, as well as a final data collection activity was deemed to be needed. It is to be hoped this will provide the hard data needed to contextualize the rich anecdotal evidence gathered.

As storytelling was found to have merit by the members of the schools where it was delivered the MEAP steering group agreed to focus on developing more evidence of the impact of storytelling on children.

Children in primary schools have access to more supports for mental health and emotional wellbeing

Art Therapy

While the number of children supported through Art Therapy was small there is a large evidence base of the impact of Art Therapy. This small-scale project has however been successful with children, teachers, parents and therapists reporting on the impact and teachers reporting that for some children the impact was evidenced a year after the therapy was offered. Art Therapy is sought by schools and parents and is now being funded through the community mental health and wellbeing funding in Midlothian with a wait list evidenced by at least one third sector agency.

Trauma Informed Staff

Following the trauma informed practice training sessions, school staff reported that they had shown increases in their knowledge, confidence and skills and were willing to make changes to their practice. However, since this training was delivered, we have had a pandemic and more recently school staff have been witnessed to be under huge stress which will impact on their continued ability to sustain these gains.

On completion of the training, staff were invited to reflect on what resources they would need to implement a trauma informed approach in their classrooms and the following suggestions were made:

• Further training to provide and embed strategies and practical tools for use in the classroom.
• Further training on the impacts of trauma and the language used around trauma.
• More reflective practice sessions providing space for discussion and sharing of successes and issues.

Efforts to support these gaps were addressed through the provision of the “the jigsaw child” training in 3 primary schools and the testing of a range of approaches to support the practical application of a trauma informed approach at school, including a new behavioural management programme (the PAX Good Behaviour Game) in 8 primary schools; the provision of a reflective practice group, and supporting 4 schools to adopt the Building Resilience Programme as a whole school intervention. School staff reported that this training helped them have greater understanding and learn new tools to support children. This can however not be regarded as a "one off" exercise, rather ongoing support will be required to be offered to both address staff turnover but also to help support teachers to continue to implement this approach while at the same time supporting them to have the emotional resilience themselves to have the capacity to support children's emotional health and wellbeing.

Children in primary schools have tools to support their own emotional wellbeing

Youth Mindfulness

This project was able to demonstrate that youth mindfulness was successful in giving children tools to support their own emotional wellbeing. There is emerging evidence on the benefits of mindfulness on the well-being of students and teachers in the classroom [1]. 

A vast majority of children agreed or strongly agreed to the survey question "When I practice mindfulness, I end up feeling happier". Children also strongly agreed that mindfulness helps them stay calm when they are angry or upset and over 50% of children said that they had used mindfulness strategies outside of the class when they had been upset and it had helped.

Children strongly agreed that mindfulness helped them to focus on their work/concentrate which shows the potentially far-reaching impact of this practice within the classroom environment.

Comments from children when asked what they would say to a child from another class when asked if they should go to a mindfulness class include: “I would say to them “go” because I have been really calm lately” and “it is fun because you relax”.

“There was a notable effect on children before and after the sessions and drop-in and the children were generally able to identify feelings of calm and relaxation within themselves after they had practiced mindfulness.”

Anna Shepherd, Mindfulness Practitioner at Newtongrange Primary School 2019-2020

Parents felt that the mindfulness journals used during COVID-19 supported their children to focus on the present in a better way, helped them to feel relaxed and less worried and it also supported bonding between those parents and children who decided to do the activities together.

 Yoga

The sample size of the yoga pilot was small, and it is hard to draw firm conclusions, but preliminary findings suggest that it is helpful to children to support their emotional wellbeing based on the outcome for the 12 children who participated. For example,:

• The feedback from teachers, pupils and group facilitators demonstrated the short-term benefits, observed by them during the course of the project, of incorporating and using yoga and meditation in the school day.
• 11 out of 12 children said that they enjoyed yoga and would recommend it to a friend. They said that it was fun and helped to calm them. Feedback included: “This is really calm: I want to do this all the time” “poses help me relax”
• 7 out of 12 children reported that they strongly agreed that they would like to practice yoga at home, 3 somewhat agreed and 2 children did not plan to do so. 10 out of 12 children reported that yoga helps them to stay calm when angry, with 1 somewhat agreeing and 1 child disagreeing. 9 children reported that they used the tools learnt when upset with 2 somewhat agreeing while 1 child did not agree. All children reported improved concentration as a result of learning yoga.

Yoga was not universally helpful but had a beneficial impact for some of the children and would therefore merit further research.

A growing body of scientific research shows that introducing yoga and mindfulness activities to primary school pupils is associated with a significant improvement in emotional and psychosocial quality of life. Through the delivery of intervention pupils got an opportunity to explore their body-mind connection and how they were feeling in the present moment. This supported their self-regulation and emotional harmony. There is a lot of evidence that children used these techniques outside of the school and some were planning to use them in the future. However, it is necessary to note that, it is difficult to predict if this will be a sustainable change without teachers embedding it in their practice. It's perhaps unreasonable or unfair to put all of the onus on children to sustain this change. Without school staff being given the resources to support children with the tool and techniques they have learnt to use it is hard to ensure that changes are sustainable

Test of Change Learning

The delivery of trauma informed practice sessions within a school setting presented some challenges in its own right, and these were compounded by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdowns and subsequent restrictions. Challenges included:

• Difficulties finding confidential space, free from interruption, in which to deliver therapeutic interventions. It is imperative to create a safe space to undertake this type of activity, but many schools did not have this capacity. In one instance COVID-19 restrictions meant a room used previously had to be abandoned as it was considered to be inadequately ventilated, but leaving the door ajar to address this issue removed the confidential nature of the space.
• The increased demands on teachers’ time resulting from the pandemic impacted on their ability to attend training /reflective practice and to gain benefit or learning from therapeutic sessions.
• The need to adapt delivery to meet COVID-19 restrictions required time for additional learning on the part of project staff, for example they had to learn how to offer a safe intervention outdoors and how to engage children in this space. Providing Storytelling outside meant that the storyteller had to look at other creative means to engage the children one of which was to involve them in drawing out the stories. This innovation worked really well at engaging those children who had not previously engaged well with these activities.
• Having sufficient time to build good communication with the various school management teams. The degree of challenge varied from school-to-school dependent on a variety of issues the school teams were engaging with, but included some teams not being clear on, or taking longer to understand, the importance of building good lines of communication as a means to delivering quality interventions.
• Recognition of the need for teaching staff to engage with the interventions and delivery to their pupils. In some teams the therapists were regarded as substitute teaching staff and the teachers did not engage in the activities, and this impacted on the outcomes achieved which were generally much better where teachers supported the implementation of the intervention.

[1] Devcich D.A., Rix G., Bernay R., Graham E. Effectiveness of a mindfulness-based program on school children’s self-reported well-being: A pilot study comparing effects with an emotional literacy program. J. Appl. Sch. Psychol. 2017;33:309–330.

The Jigsaw Partnership was made up of four local voluntary sector organisations (Midlothian Sure Start, Home Link Family Support, Play Midlothian and Play Therapy Base) and the Midlothian Council Educational Psychology Team, with additional support from the local NHS CAMHS team and the Midlothian Community Lifelong Learning Team. It proposed a more collaborative approach to the delivery of a range of training and support activities, focused on prevention and early action and aimed at improving the mental health and wellbeing of children, their families and carers through increased provision coupled with quicker, easier access to support. 

This more joined up way of working also aimed to see primary school staff in the project catchment area provided with advice, information and tools to promote and engender good mental health amongst their pupil populations, and to help maintain their own wellbeing. The supports and activities offered through the project were chosen for being evidenced as increasing wellbeing, and at the time, were not either in place at all within Penicuik or not readily available in the area.

A key mechanism to enable this local system change was the creation of a single point of access and allocation for all referrals into the voluntary sector partners involved in the project, the aim being to streamline and speed up the referral process into their services.

The Partnership team met regularly during the early months of project set up and then less frequently throughout the life of the project to share experiences, monitor activity, reflect on and address any issues arising, and respond to any emerging risks.

Activities and Particpation

The programme of activity delivered into the Penicuik area through the Jigsaw Project was developed by project partners in close consultation with key stakeholders, with ongoing discussions enabling project providers to adapt the offer and tailor it to the specific needs identified. This level of engagement and the wider partnership working it fostered was enormously beneficial to the project in enabling the providers to respond to changing beneficiary needs following a period of enforced project suspension during COVID-19 lockdowns.

The activities delivered into Penicuik schools and community settings were:

1. Art therapy sessions in which 17 children participated & 1 adult
2. Dyadic art therapy (parent and child) delivered to 1 family
3. Systemic family support including life story work in which 8 families participated
4. Counselling delivered to 4 adults
5. Supported play therapy sessions for younger children demonstrating early signs of mental distress in which 27 children participated
6. Headstrong workshops for P7 children. delivered to c136 children
7. Digital wellbeing workshops for P7 pupils delivered by EPS and CLL. to approximately 80 children
8. Parent Anxiety Management Workshops attended by 29 self-selecting participants
9. Staff mental health awareness combined with staff wellbeing session delivered to 19 staff
10. Staff anxiety management training provided at 1 high school to 37 staff
11. Trauma skilled support session provided to a whole school team from 1 primary school
12. Staff training - Zones of Regulation - attended by a whole school team (44 staff) from 1 primary school
13. Peer mediation staff development session delivered to a whole school team from 1 primary school.

The majority of the interventions above were delivered over 1 or 2 sessions with only art therapy, play therapy and the Headstrong programme delivered over a period of weeks. The therapeutic supports were targeted via the referral process to those with the relevant level of need. The Headstrong programme was targeted at year 7 pupils as it is focused on enabling children to transition successfully to secondary school. The staff training sessions were delivered at the request of Head Teachers and shaped in partnership with them to address the specific learning requirements of the staff teams due to participate.

Delivery

COVID-19 restrictions were in place for a significant period of the project delivery timeframe, with new ways of working introduced subsequently, impacting on much of the remaining period of delivery. As a consequence, schools were under significantly increased pressure when working to deliver even their standard services. As a result, school staff have struggled to engage with and refer into the project. Schools and Early Years settings have been unable to communicate with families in the usual way for much of the project duration, making it harder to promote project activities than was anticipated at the point of proposal. 

These issues have had an impact on the number of referrals received into the project which have been markedly lower than expected. The requirement to move much of the planned activity to online, rather than face to face, has similarly impacted on the level of feedback partners have been able to collect throughout the life of the project. Therefore, while the evidence of impact was overwhelmingly positive where it was gathered and was sufficient to confirm that where increased capacity is offered into the system for those with low to moderate support needs it will be welcomed and utilised, it was insufficient to recommend this new partnership approach as a means of delivering transformational change. However, the relationships forged across the partnership and amongst the wider group of stakeholders will persist and continue to bear fruit beyond the life of the project.

Reflections on the newly developed third sector Single Point of Access

The initial proposal to hold fortnightly allocation meetings proved difficult to deliver due to restricted resources within the participating organisations. Partners over-estimated how quickly they could develop shared systems and a new referral form. However, once these were in place 6 months into the project, the process offered an improvement in terms of the speed of referral processing and allocation, a point noted by at least one Head Teacher in their evaluation comments. But partners noted that further investment in shared systems, dedicated administrative time and protected time for managers to engage in allocation meetings would be essential in order to develop this initial work for use in any further projects.

Engagement with stakeholders

As already noted, COVID-19 restrictions and subsequent new ways of working imposed following the end of lockdowns impacted significantly on project engagement, both in terms of the number of beneficiaries and the evidence of impact that was gathered during the evaluation period.

Despite these issues, engagement levels, whilst lower than hoped, were nonetheless reasonable within the parameters of the project with:

• 269 children and young people participating in activities aimed at supporting and maintaining their good mental health and wellbeing
• 43 parent/carers participating in direct support interventions aimed at increasing skills, knowledge and awareness
• 150 school staff members taking part in activity to develop the effectiveness and speed with which they are able to identify and respond to early and emerging mental health and wellbeing issues, either their own, those of colleagues or the pupils in their care.

The Penicuik area has 1 high school and 3 primary schools, and all were engaged in the project, from shaping the content of activities and workshops to jointly delivering some of the project content, through to evaluating impact on both staff teams and pupils.

Participant numbers were lower than anticipated as a consequence of COVID restrictions and the need to deliver much of the content online. This also impacted considerably on the ability of providers to collect evaluation information, all of which was gathered directly after an intervention ended. However, despite the small amount of evaluation data available, it is noteworthy that all of it was favourable. Evidence demonstrates that while interventions were underway, they had a positive or very positive effect on beneficiaries, providing them with increased awareness and knowledge and improved skills and confidence.

Art therapy:

• 100% reported an improvement in their individual wellbeing.
• 64% reported an improvement in their family relationships
• 70% in their school relationships
• 77% in their individual relationships
• 70% reported an improvement in their communication
• and 65% an improvement in their overall wellbeing which influences how the family function day to day.

Play therapy:

• “After every session we do mindfulness, and it really helps me calm down and forget everything. I love nature.” (Play, Nature and Wellbeing child)
• “As a pupil who struggles with many aspects of core academic learning, the group has allowed him to experience success and enjoyment. He has spoken enthusiastically and with some pride about the activities and his contribution […] He is less reliant on support from a Learning Assistant to begin and progress with tasks. He is able to acknowledge and speak about his successes and is more willing to accept help.” (Teacher of Play, Nature and Wellbeing participant)
• "The Play in Nature group has been hugely beneficial for [child]. He has thrived on the outdoor activity… he has had the opportunity to socialise with a different cohort of peers and benefited from getting to know them better. They in turn have got to know him. He has an identified best friend. This has been great for his self-esteem.” (Teacher of Play, Nature and Wellbeing child).

Digital wellbeing workshops:

The average rating for the workshop was 8/10 in both schools, and 100% of participants recommended the workshop be repeated to other P7 classes.

Staff mental health awareness and wellbeing sessions:

18 out of 19 participants said it would impact their practice with the other 1 saying it would somewhat impact their practice.

Headstrong workshops:

All pupils recommended they should be extended to all P7 pupils.

Parent Anxiety Management Workshops:

100% of respondents confirmed an increased understanding of anxiety, and improved knowledge of support available.

The children and young people who engaged with art and play therapy sessions or participated in the digital and headstrong workshops learned strategies and were offered tools to help them manage and maintain good mental health and a sense of wellbeing. They were provided with supported safe spaces to explore and talk about their feelings and emotions and helped to understand what could work to build their resilience, helping them cope with challenges and setbacks in their day to day lives.

The school staff groups who participated in the various supportive interventions offered into their schools gained improved awareness of how early or emerging mental health issues may manifest in the children and young people in their care, acquiring tools and strategies for responding to such situations in their classrooms. Additionally, they were supported to understand their own needs in terms of sustaining good mental health and wellbeing, and equipped improved knowledge of how to support colleagues too. Like the children and young people, the school staff was introduced to a common language for talking about mental health and wellbeing and given space to ask questions and discuss concerns in a supported and safe environment. They were provided with ideas for opening up and continuing conversations about mental health and wellbeing within their classrooms and encouraged to continue helping one another to promote good mental health across the whole school.

Parents and carers who self-selected to attend the anxiety awareness workshops were provided with knowledge to help them better identify the signs of mental health difficulties and information about how to more effectively respond to and cope with signs of anxiety within themselves and/or their children.

Without longer term follow up of participants it is not possible to say whether the knowledge, tools and strategies have been embedded and continue to be of use.

Partnership working

As a consequence of the project, partnership working has improved and developed in a number of significant ways:

• third sector partners worked together to confirm a menu of activities and to develop a project specific joint referral form and process for faster access to support (see below for further information on this process)
• partners held joint planning and data gathering meetings with Penicuik school staff to target activities and supports that addressed local needs
• partners jointly delivered a number of activities for the first time, increasing learning about and deeper understanding of one another's service areas, skills and knowledge
• third sector partners worked with a number of schools for the first time and have continued to build these on these new relationships
• there has also been increased collaboration between Jigsaw partners and school staff as they have worked together to shape sessions for both staff and children and young people, and to deliver some activities directly.

Evidence of children and young people accessing support following project interventions

No evidence was collected of beneficiaries specifically accessing support following project interventions, but a small number of referrals were made to other services such as LIAM and CAMHS from within the Jigsaw project, suggesting some engagement with the CYP involved in identifying issues requiring ongoing or more intense support.

Evidence of children and young people using learning, tools and techniques to support and maintain good mental health

In post-Headstrong evaluation surveys with P7 classes, the majority of the 136 pupils who took part responded to the question 'When you feel sad or worried do you know what to do? If so, what?', with a 'yes, talk to a trusted adult'. The number who responded in this manner was more than in the pre-headstrong survey.

Whilst art therapy and play therapy interventions, like the Headstrong programme, also took place over a number of weeks feedback and evaluation at the end of the process did not ask participants to provide examples of how they had used tools and techniques they had learned during their activities to support their mental health and wellbeing.

Other activities in the Jigsaw programme took place over 1 or 2 sessions only and so it would not have been possible to ascertain from feedback whether new skills were being used by participants outside the learning environment.

Evidence of adults accessing support and/or using tools and techniques following project interventions

Feedback provided during evaluation suggests adults who participated in interventions have greater awareness of mental health and wellbeing issues as they may manifest in and affect the children and young people in their care, are more confident in their abilities to respond appropriately to such issues and concerns, and have a better understanding both of strategies they can employ to provide support and of where to refer to for additional help as required (see below for further details). This feedback would suggest that they are better equipped to provide more effective support to their children and young people that they would previously have been, but no examples are provided within evaluation exercises to demonstrate that this has been the case in practical instances.

However, there is no specific evidence provided as part of evaluation activities to demonstrate more timely interventions are occurring - there is no noted increase in referrals to any support services that can be linked to the interventions that have been delivered and nor are there examples provided of how or when adults have delivered more timely interventions following their participation in the programme activities.

During evaluation of the Jigsaw project schools have commented:

• Doing the project over 2 years gave time for understanding of Jigsaw to filter through the staff team so over time more appropriate referrals are made.
• Staff are able to put into practice certain elements of improved mental health awareness and have benefitted from reassurance that they are doing the right thing.
• Trauma informed practice training has helped staff to be more open minded, and we are more open as a school to putting different things in place. Approaches and skills take a while to embed and understanding about individual children's needs and mental health is moving forward. COVID has helped to bring these mental health concerns to the front and supported staff willingness to engage. What Jigsaw has put in place with all the different supports has helped.
• Staff are more aware about mental health following training input and staff are getting better at recognising behaviours in children that children can't articulate due to their age and stage and at the same time more parental awareness too.
• The biggest impact has been from staff understanding of mental health and wellbeing, school colleagues who have strengths in this are paired with other colleagues to help embed these values and it has really helped that therapists spend time in the staff room talking with staff.
• Therapist conversations with class teachers help teachers to better understand how to make appropriate referrals.
• Stigma around mental health is not an issue as such, but it has been helpful to get a message out to parents who refer to children's anxiety frequently that it's ok and normal to feel worried sometimes.

At one primary school, following Staff MH Awareness and Staff Wellbeing sessions, staff later spoke about their continued hard work to create a shared language around mental health. Class teachers now take time to prioritise wellbeing and are welcoming of practical resources and strategies to support this. Further sessions will support and embed this shared language.

Through evaluation gathered from parent anxiety workshops, parents were asked on a scale of 1 to 5 do they feel more confident in managing their child's anxiety and the average response was rated as 3.25.

Children and young people - earlier engagement with support and enjoying better mental health and wellbeing

The evaluation data collected tells us that by providing additional capacity into the Penicuik area the project provided a relatively small cohort of school pupils with:

• improved access to information about mental health and wellbeing
• new tools and strategies for identifying and coping with their own and others mental health and wellbeing issues
• more confidence about the support available to them and where to go to access it
• a common language for discussing issues relating to mental health and wellbeing.

Feedback gathered during the evaluation confirmed that respondents benefitted from their involvement with project activities and would recommend them to others.

Evidence of earlier engagement of support was unavailable.

Children and young people feel better supported by trusted adults

Whilst no evidence was gathered during the project to support this specific statement, the positive responses provided by school staff involved in project activities suggest that they felt better able to both identify emerging issues earlier, and to offer more effective support to the young people in their care during school hours.

Children and young people are better able to fulfil their potential for learning, life and work.

Athough it was not possible to evidence within the parameters of the Jigsaw project, it is possible and hoped for that some of the children and young people who clearly benefitted from their involvement in activities will retain gained knowledge, tools and techniques. The hope is for them to continue using them effectively to manage and improve their mental health and wellbeing over the longer term.

Conclusions

This Jigsaw Project achieved the following elements of its overarching aims:

• It provided participating school children with information to better understand mental health and wellbeing and with some tools to maintain or improve their own, and to support others around them.
• It raised awareness amongst participating school staff, parents and carers of signs that may indicate early and/emerging mental health issues, enabling them to more easily and quickly identify and effectively support children experiencing such issues.
• It provided participants with a range of responses to build resilience and personal agency.
• It enabled more direct access to support and services provided by project providers which was experienced as delivering a quicker response by some school staff.

Delivery and Engagement

During the project delivery period COVID-19 restrictions impacted on the numbers of referrals made into project activities and on the providers' ability to deliver as extensive of a programme as originally planned. Schools were under increased pressure when working to deliver even their standard services. As a result, school staff struggled to engage with and refer into the project. Schools and Early Years settings were unable to communicate with families in the usual way for much of the project duration, making it harder to promote project activities than was anticipated at the point of proposal.

The requirement to move much of the planned activity to online, rather than face to face, presented particular challenges to providers in terms of gathering feedback and evaluation data. Therefore, while what evidence there was of impact was positive and confirmed that where increased capacity is offered into the system for those with low to moderate support needs it will be welcomed and utilised, it was insufficient to recommend this new partnership approach as a means of delivering transformational change. However, the relationships forged across the partnership and amongst the wider group of stakeholders will persist and continue to bear fruit beyond the life of the project.

Reflections on the newly developed third sector Single Point of Access

Once established, the single point of access was felt by participating partners to offer an improvement in terms of the speed of referral processing and allocation, a point noted by at least one Head Teacher in their evaluation comments. However, the initial proposal to hold fortnightly allocation meetings proved difficult to deliver due to restricted resources within the participating organisations, Partners over-estimated how quickly they could develop shared systems and a new referral form, neither of which was in place for the first 6 months of the project.

Partners noted that further investment in shared systems, dedicated administrative time and protected time for managers to engage in allocation meetings would be essential in order to develop this initial work for use in any further projects.

Partnership working

As a consequence of the project, partnership working has improved and developed in a number of significant ways:

• Third sector partners worked together to confirm a menu of activities and to develop a project specific joint referral form and process for faster access to support - see below for further information on this process.
• Partners held joint planning and data gathering meetings with Penicuik school staff to target activities and supports to address local needs.
• Partners jointly delivered a number of activities for the first time, increasing learning about and deeper understanding of one another's service areas, skills and knowledge.
• Third sector partners worked with a number of schools for the first time and have continued to build these on these new relationships.
• There has also been increased collaboration between Jigsaw partners and school staff as they have worked together to shape sessions for both staff and children and young people, and to deliver some activities directly.

It is anticipated that the closer working relationships forged as a consequence of the project will continue to deliver improved outcomes for local children and young people through new developments, better communication and different ways of working.

Background

Research indicates that storytelling in schools can promote emotional closeness and empathy between children in a class and between children and the teacher telling the story, and can increase children's feelings of connection to school (Wright & Dunsmuir, 2019). In turn, it is evidenced that school connectedness correlates positively with children's levels of emotional wellbeing (Resnick et al., 1997) and self-esteem (King et al., 2002).

This Test of Change follows on from and expands the storytelling element of a previous Test of Change undertaken in selected primary schools in Midlothian that aimed to embed trauma-informed practice within early and preventative ways of working to support children’s wellbeing. This programme of work found that children who participated in storytelling sessions displayed increased levels of self-confidence, improved literacy skills and engaged better in the classroom. Evidence was based on feedback from children, teachers and parents, which showed the positive impact of storytelling on children's wellbeing; however, data collection was hampered by the effects of Covid-19, resulting in a lack of robust evidence to support the perceived outcomes. Consequently, this Test of Change was developed to expand the storytelling delivery to a wider school population over a longer timescale, supported by a robust evaluation plan. From the outset, the engagement of teachers and schools was determined to be a crucial factor in successful delivery and outcomes of the sessions.

What we did

We recruited a professional storyteller who worked in three primary schools and one high school, between April 2022 and October 2023, completing 168 storytelling sessions, reaching 395 pupils aged from 5 to12 years old.

Storytelling sessions took place weekly in the primary school classrooms, with each session lasting approximately 45-50 minutes.

Although each session is different, there was a structure and regular elements including:

• Initial fun engagement activities
• Interaction with the puppets (see below)
• Riddles
• A story
• A calming activity and goodbye to the puppets.

We wanted children to experience the magic of storytelling, to have fun with stories, experience the wonder and the wild possibilities they create. Specifically, within the context of MEAP, we aimed for the children to be able to identify the challenges and emotions in the story and experience the power of metaphor to help them to understand and process their own challenges and emotions within that a safe metaphorical space.

Participation

From commencement of the Storytelling Test of Change in April 2022 until October 2023, the storyteller worked in three primary schools and one high school, reaching 395 pupils and engaging 26 education staff. During this time, 168 storytelling sessions were delivered with pupils from Primary 1 to Senior 1, covering an age range from 5-12 years.

The storyteller noted that the teachers’ involvement was not only vital to support the organisation of the sessions, but that their engagement was integral to the value and ongoing benefit of the sessions:

“During all of the session the teachers' full and conscious involvement is really important. It shows the children the teacher is part of it and values it too, it means he/she can hear the story and understand the issues within it, and be able to explore these issues if needed later.”

The puppets that help tell the stories

• Tiptoe is a very poor and often hungry wee mouse, but she has a kind friend who helps out, Ratty.
• Ratty is a rat who is often worried about his friend Tiptoe. He tries to help her, but sometimes he's hungry too and feels guilty he can't help more.
• Misty is a large crow, with a yellow beak, because he's got a blackbird as a grandparent. He gets called "yellow beak" by other crows, which really hurts him. He can get easily over excited, and finds it hard to calm down sometimes, and the children have learnt a soft song that helps him calm. He often looks dishevelled.
• Rainbow is a macaw, or parrot, and can get angry easily. He is often cheeky or even rude and can go in a huff. But he's kind inside, it's just that he sometimes can't find that kindness inside and then needs help. His experiences when he was young in the amazon rainforest made him angry about things.
• Misty and Rainbow often fall out and fight, usually over silly small things. The children have helped them become friend again more than once. They almost always ask how it's going with them.
• Gordon is a dragon. But although he's a dragon he's different to other dragons. He's shy and doesn't eat princesses, he doesn't like to scare people or destroy kingdoms or fight anyone, especially not knights. But because he's so different, other dragons make fun of him, and he often feels lonely or not part of things, that he doesn't really belong. But he has found friendship with Possum, who understands how he feels, and she is really kind, and a good listener. Gordon has a secret passion, dancing. he loves dancing so much but can't say that to other dragons because they will laugh even more at him. But he tells people he trusts are kind and won't laugh. He trusts the children and they know, and they help him dance.
• Possum can't speak with a voice but speaks with her expressions. She has big ears which help her be a really good listener. But she doesn't just listen to the words people say, because she understands that we can say things with our body language or facial expressions that we don't say in words. So, when she listens, she also listens to what is not said, or what is under the words. And she never interrupts like Rainbow does. She understands how people are really feeling, even if the words might be saying something different.

The puppets are a blended family. They live together in a small bag, and it can get cramped, but they love coming out and being part of the storytelling and appreciate the help the children give them.

There is no doubt that, as represented in multiple activities collecting pupils’ reactions, the storytelling sessions were well received by pupils. In one school, 34 out of 36 Primary 5 and Primary 6 pupils who attended storytelling sessions used positive words to describe why they liked stories and how the storytelling sessions made them feel. The most commonly used words to describe their feelings were 'happy' and 'calm'. They found the stories 'interesting', and this interest combined with the positive feelings that they describe, provide insights to the children's motivation to engage in the sessions.

The following images are from a similar activity undertaken in a different school:

Children were able to talk about their favourite story from the sessions and about the storyteller’s puppets. One child’s favourite was The Invisible Boat, which they liked because the children helped their father to build an invisible boat, saying “because children are more creative than adults”. Many of the pupils expressed an affection for individual puppets; for example, some enjoyed stroking and hugging Possum, and some liked that fact that Gordon the dragon was shy and liked dancing, suggesting a relatability and an ability to identify with certain characteristics.

Feedback from teachers at a multi-school event suggested that some pupils were initially reluctant or reticent to attend the sessions, but as the sessions continued all pupils showed improved engagement. All of the teachers reported that all of the children now engaged well with the sessions and looked forward to the storyteller coming in.

"Within the sessions the children’s engagement is evident. There is such a level of excitement and enthusiasm as he enters the classroom and throughout the story telling. We see children who are often reluctant to share their ideas, contributing through the use of puppets and storytelling."

In one case, significant change in engagement was observed in a P1 child according to teacher and storyteller observations. They were described as a child who was 'always on the teacher’s knee' and 'would not leave their side', but eventually became fully engaged in the sessions without needing to return to the teacher at all. Other teachers agreed that there were particular benefits for younger pupils and pupils with ASN:

"The younger members of the class, the ones that are not at the stage of some of the older ones, particularly benefit. Also, those with additional needs."

“Those who maybe struggle with more formal learning seem to get particular benefit from the stories. Particularly good for those who struggle to engage in other ways.”

Another teacher recounted how the pupils in her class had asked for more stories and riddles in class as a result of the storytelling sessions.

“The kiddies were delighted with their riddles and your book – they have asked if we can read a story a day this week and next.”

Storytelling encourages children to think about feelings and to practice naming feelings and emotions. Teachers described how the storytelling sessions created a safe space for pupils to learn to discuss feelings through the ‘safety’ of using the 3rd person i.e. puppets and characters in the stories. In turn some pupils and teachers suggested that the emotions and skills present during the storytelling sessions continue to be accessible to them afterwards and can be drawn on in times of need. One child described this ongoing benefit: "it's almost a place of comfort and when you want you can rethink them in your head." In a different school one teacher commented: “Many of our kids found your sessions so calming and therapeutic in a world that can be challenging for them.”

The sessions gave pupils a space for personal development and learning. Teachers described how "the sessions have been fantastic and have created a real safe space for our pupils to be themselves" and "the two groups have benefitted positively from Tim’s sessions. They have developed confidence and self-belief and have really thrived during the sessions." Multiple teachers across the different schools suggested that this was particularly helpful for pupils who struggle with aspects of the school day or with other approaches to learning and said that the storytelling space allowed these pupils to open up and flourish. One teacher talked about how the use of puppets, sounds and rhythm makes a “big difference to their learning” because they can engage with this but find it difficult to engage in other areas of learning. This support for pupils to develop their capacity to engage and pay attention was mirrored by another teacher who sent the storyteller feedback saying “K in particular is gutted and as you recognised made huge progress in attending your story sessions. Choosing to sit for two hours to listen to you which was almost impossible for him last term which was credit to you and your story telling skills”.

Children also developed increased confidence around speaking and sharing their own stories and ideas. One teacher described a pupil who “shares her understanding of stories, emotions and characters through adding to the story. She shows her ability to predict and develop a narrative within the sessions which we do not see within other literacy focused learning. She shows her understanding through her reactions and ideas and often takes the lead with developing the story. It is a joy to see her sense of pride when she adds and develops characters and stories and also to hear her giggles throughout the session.”

Further, the pupils benefited from feedback about their engagement. One example of this is an email sent from the storyteller to the teacher about a session:

“C engaged the best I've ever seen him in the first session. He volunteered to attend the second one and so during the riddle challenge I included some riddles I'd used in the first group in case he'd remember the answers. He did every one, plus he made good guesses in the ones he didn't know. During the story in the second session (which involved predicting how the character gets out of a succession of tricky situations) C contributed at each stage, and twice came up the answer. He was engaged in a way I hadn't seen him before.”

The teacher responded noting that this positive feedback itself would be beneficial to the pupil:

“As you said there was a marked improvement yesterday and I was very proud of him. When he arrives today I will let him know what you said as he doesn't get positive feedback very often so thank you again for that.”

This exchange demonstrates the benefit that the pupil received from the storytelling sessions, the opportunity that they gained for positive feedback and the flow of positive communication between storyteller, teacher and pupil.

Children tell their parents about the storytelling sessions and retell the stories they hear

Verbal feedback from parents / carers, teachers and children themselves indicated that pupils took stories and riddles home to share with their families. Parents and carers expressed interest and enthusiasm, noting that they enjoyed this point of connection with their children. Some told how they watched the storyteller with their children on YouTube and others suggested that they found ways to share more stories and riddles in their day-to-day lives.

The storyteller noted that, when he revisited stories in later sessions, children remembered the stories and the refrains. A teacher noted her expectation that these stories will stay with the children and be retold over time:

“Having Tim coming into our school and working with many of our children has been an amazing opportunity and I am sure the children will be sharing his stories for many years to come.”

Children tell their own stories

Children had opportunities to share their own ideas for stories during the storytelling sessions. For example, one story, ‘The Chicken who Loved the Sock’ was a story suggestion from one class that was then shared, developed and customised by other classes. The storyteller reported that the children seemed to find this a positive experience and created a booklet of these stories created by the children that he shared with all the pupils who would like it.

They came up with the title, the plot and theme, the imagery and endings, and I crafted a tale from the children's ideas and told it to them so they could flesh it out further with their own ideas. Only then did I write it down. When I read it to them many children recognised the part they contributed with comments like "that was my idea" "that was my bit" "I suggested that" "that's me."  So, I think they felt possession of the tales even though they didn't write it as such, the stories were clearly theirs. (The Storyteller)

Teachers do things differently in class

Multiple teachers talked about how the storytelling sessions interacted with and influenced the things that they did and the ways they worked together in class. This is credit to the work of the storyteller to complement the curriculum and also the engagement of teachers.

“This term we have been working on a Rhyme topic and Tim has incorporated lots of different rhyming elements to his stories, encouraging the children to guess the next line based on the rhyme. During our writing sessions the children are able to share lots of characters, settings and descriptions they know. Having Tim telling stories has really expanded their imaginations and they are able to take his stories and adapt them to make them their own.”

“As a class we used Tim’s stories to create our own stories which we shared with our parents when they came in for an afternoon to share learning.” (P5/6 Teacher)

Parents engage with schools

There is evidence that stories from the storytelling sessions that took place in schools have been shared by children outside of school and have also brought parents and carers into the schools. All of the primary schools finished the storytelling sessions with an opportunity for parents to come in to schools and experience the storytelling that they had likely heard about from their children.

By all accounts these sessions were well-attended and successful. One Depute Head teacher noted that more parents had attended the storytelling session than any other previous parent drop-in for that class. Another teacher noted feedback about the session:

“The Storytelling Showcase was a perfect way to end our sessions with Tim and the families all enjoyed sitting with their children and joining in a story. Many of the parents commented on how much they enjoyed the morning, with one of the children’s grandparents commenting that it was a ‘magical morning’.” (teacher)

There is substantial evidence that the storytelling sessions have provided pupils with powerful opportunities to explore their creativity and emotional literacy through stories. There is also evidence that pupils who found it difficult to engage with other activities in school showed sustained engagement and enjoyment in the storytelling sessions. The engagement, excitement and learning from pupils have led to opportunities to strengthen connections between pupils, parents & carers and schools. It is credit to the storyteller and the approach that so many pupils, teachers and parents/carers expressed sadness that the storytelling sessions were coming to an end and to the anticipated sustained impact of the intervention.

“Then, after a year, the storyteller sadly had to say goodbye to the children because he was needed in another place. He knew it wouldn’t last forever because nothing really lasts forever. 

Well it can, if you make it a story. Stories can last forever, as long as they are remembered, told and listened to. 

So he decided to put the stories in a book.  And give the book to every child who wanted one.” 

(The Story of the Stories: Tim the Storyteller)

Background

This test of change was developed in order to test a different approach to delivering health and wellbeing education programmes to children and children in schools. It used a combination of universal and targeted approaches to work with pupils at Primary 7 and Senior 1 levels to achieve the following MEAP aims:

• improved access to a range of support services for children, children and their carers
• provision of a range of easily accessible tools and techniques to help maintain good mental health and wellbeing
• improved attitudes and reduced stigma around mental health within schools and communities.

It was anticipated that the delivery of a universal programme for Primary 7 classes across 4 schools, followed by targeted group and one-to-one support for selected children from those schools in Primary 7, would assist children and children to better manage their health and wellbeing and to build resilience to face future health and wellbeing challenges.

The test of change involved:

1. Delivering preventative topic-based Health and Wellbeing sessions in schools
2. Delivering follow-up group work and one-to-one sessions to children and children identified as needing further support
3. Awareness raising and information resources created for children and children involved and their carers, supplementing the sessions given
4. Follow up support and evaluation in S1 with the original P7 cohort.

Health and Wellbeing workshops

Between September and December 2022, three part-time Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers (HWYW) delivered a course of 6-8 workshop sessions with all P7 pupils across 4 primary schools. This universal preventative programme focused on providing children with information, tools and awareness to encourage and maintain good mental health and resilience. Topics included in the programme are:

• What is emotional wellbeing?
• How do you know you’re doing well?
• What things can be helpful?
• How can you help others?
• How can you help yourself?
• Positive social relationships
• What’s a healthy relationship?
• How do you manage stress?
• Anxiety and your sleep
• Targeted group work and one-to-one support.

From January 2023 and following the universal workshop programme, Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers worked collaboratively with staff in each of the four primary schools to ascertain if children within their cohort were in need of further support to build resilience or were in need of early intervention approach connected to health and wellbeing issues. Consideration was taken of who would benefit from group support including their peers and who would benefit from individualised one-to-one support with a trusted adult.

Summer programme

The opportunity to participate in the summer programme was offered to all children who engaged in one-to-one or targeted group support. The two Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers ran the programme in partnership with an outdoor organization called Driftwood Adventures.

The programme took the form of two groups over two weeks ensuring it was more accessible to all the children and adjustments were made to ensure that with additional needs could take part.

The programme included:

Day 1 - Musselburgh Lagoons - kayaking and paddle boarding, getting to know the MYPAS staff and equipment and getting to know the group.

Day 2 - Gladhouse Reservoir - kayaking and paddle boarding, kayaking to the island in the middle of the reservoir and exploring, games with MYPAS staff and group.

Day 3 - Union Canal and Ratho Climbing Centre - canoeing up the canal to the climbing centre, team building and climbing for the afternoon.

Day 4 - Portobello Beach - beach day involving games on the beach, team building, paddle boarding, kayaking and hot chocolate.

This test of change involved children who were 10-12 years old (Primary 7 and S1).

• 140 children, 4 schools and 5 classes took part in the whole class wellbeing intervention
• 22 children took part in 5 small groups across 3 schools
• 22 children were provided with individualised one-to-one support across 4 schools
• 18 children attended the summer programme: 8 in week 1 and 10 in week 2.

Three part-time Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers and a Service Manager led on this test of change. The MYPAS Business Development Manager supported with the collation of the OutNav test of change evidence and learning.

The programme was developed with input from teaching staff specific to the developmental stage of P7 pupils; also general input from parents, carers, other partners and agencies.

Each school was offered the option of using a resilience measuring tool to screen children who would benefit from focused work or the option of working with Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers to identify children based on their current knowledge who they felt would benefit from the focused work. All schools chose the second option and identified those children within their individual classes who would benefit from either focused groupwork or individual support.

Each child/group was offered 6 sessions of focused support. This approach was reviewed during week 4 of this input to determine whether the proposed number of sessions would be increased. As a result of these reviews, 8 children participated in 6 sessions and 36 children had between 10 and 12 sessions.

Education staff

School staff and management were key stakeholders in the project with an important part to play in its success. School staff and management were responsible for making decisions about which pupils should be referred for individual support.

A detailed partnership agreement was signed to acknowledge that MYPAS staff were responsible for the group during the session and would discuss any issues that arose with the school. School staff remained in the class during universal prog sessions but were not present during targeted group and one-to-one sessions.

During the delivery of the Health and Wellbeing workshop programme with all P7 pupils across 4 primary schools, the Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers observed that children:

• came into the session prepared to engage and excited for the sessions.
• were building positive relationships with the workers. An example of this is a pupil who was disappointed. when one of the workers was not at a session as they came in to share personal information with the workers.
• who were disengaged with activities did not disrupt the rest of the group.
• were building positive peer relationships and had an ability to identify their support networks.
• were able to express and discuss challenging topics with their workers and identify a diverse range of emotions.

Children, school staff and Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers all reported that, despite some initial anxiety, children engaged well with the targeted support and that this engagement increased throughout the programme.

“The workers received feedback from the Deputy Head that the children had fed back to their teacher that they had enjoyed the session”

“The children in this group engaged really well in the session after settling in and participated really well in the group. They appeared to enjoy it and engaged in all parts of the session.”

On the evaluations for the small group sessions, one young person said that the Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers who ran the workshops were kind and multiple children said that they appreciated the support they got in the groups. Children undertook a wellbeing thermometer at the beginning of each session and Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers noted that as the sessions went on children felt more comfortable taking part in the activity in front of others in the group. At the end of each session children completed a brief feedback sheet indicating their thoughts about the session.

Children appreciated the space that the group provided in their day. One young person stated that: “I enjoyed the group. It was good to get out of class and have time to chat." Another stated “It was the best part of my Friday – people should keep going – it is fun.”

Another young person commented particularly on the smaller size of the groups saying he was surprised he enjoyed it so much as he did not enjoy the bigger class groups as they were too big. This was corroborated by Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers in another school who observed: “it was clear from spending time with them in the group that they benefitted from such a small personal group and by the end of the session they had really opened up and appeared very comfortable with the workers.”

Feedback from children about the summer programme was very positive with all who answered the question saying that they enjoyed the programme ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’. All children were able to answer questions about their favourite activity. Of those who answered a question about whether they felt more confident at the end of the summer programme, one young person said they felt ‘about the same’ with all other children saying they felt ‘more confident’ or ‘much more confident’. 

In the main, class teachers were enthusiastic about the programme and supportive of the test of change. Workers built up good relationships with the class teachers involved.

On one occasion, a headteacher fed back to Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers that she was so glad that these particular children were having the opportunity to be celebrated for their strengths and for positive input at school, as they were usually noticed for their disruptive behaviour. She said that every time she saw the children on the way in and out of the group sessions, they were smiling, and that this was unusual for them and told her a lot about how much they were getting out of the group.

The staff in the office said that when the children came in, they asked the office staff, “Are MYPAS coming in to see us today?” The staff said that whenever they said we were, the children seemed very pleased.

Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers implemented the My Star assessment and evaluation tool with children who received individual support. The My Star was developed for use with children aged 7 – 14 who are vulnerable.

My Star has 8 key areas (lefthand table) designed to open up the conversation between key or support workers and service users. Children indicate which stage they are at (relating to each area on the star chart). The stages include:

5. Managing well
4. Learning what works
3. Believing and taking action
2. Talking about it
1. Stuck.

Completing star readings is more difficult with those who may have missed sessions due to non-attendance. Some children also preferred less directed support and came to the sessions with issues they wanted to explore in more depth.

Out of the 22 children who engaged in individual support, 7 children completed both an initial star chart reading and another at the end of support. The children who completed the two outcome star readings were those who received support over an average of 8 sessions. The graph on the left shows improvements in 7 of the 8 assessment areas, with children initially being at the “able to talk about change” and “learning what works” at initial assessment to “managing well” at final assessment.

Evaluations with students that received individual support revealed more detail about specific benefits:

1. Children gain confidence to express themselves and their emotions in different ways

A clear benefit of the sessions was an opportunity for children to learn to become comfortable talking about their wellbeing and joining in with the group. One way that this was achieved was through the wellbeing thermometer. The wellbeing thermometer was pinned up at the start of each session and the children were invited to make a name tag that they would pin up on the board. This was a good opportunity to walk around the desks and have a chat with the children. The children were then invited to come up and stick their name tag on the wellbeing thermometer at the emotion word that they were feeling at that moment. There were several chats about not knowing where to put their name and it was a challenge for some of the children. This was a good indication to the energy of the group and the emotional literacy of the children. Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers reflections noted that that over the course of the sessions more children were willing to discuss where they had placed their name tag on the thermometer, suggesting that emotional confidence and literacy increased through the programme.

Children themselves also noted that they became more confident in both talking in the group generally and talking about their emotions specifically through taking part in the programme.

“I learned to say I don’t feel heard”

“O said that on the first day of Summer Programme he hardly put up his hand to ask questions at all, maybe only one time. On the last day he was putting his hand up all the time and joining in with everything.”

2. Children gain tools and techniques to manage their mental health and wellbeing

As part of the targeted sessions, children were given a box that they personalised and used to keep details of the different tools and strategies that they learned over the programme. These boxes became a focal point of the sessions for many of the children and – as will be explored later in the report – children reported behaviour change based on techniques from these boxes.

“I’m really glad I get to keep my strategies box”

3. Children learn about the support networks they can draw on and begin to develop new support networks

Children developed friendships and peer support networks through participating in the targeted sessions and the summer programme. MYPAS staff reflected on the group dynamics after each session, including the quotes below from three different groups:

“The dynamic of the group this week was really positive. It is very clear to see the children are building relationships and engaging positively each week. R appears to be a lot more comfortable and confident in the group now, not only with the workers but with the other two children also.” 

“The four of the children interacted quite well during all of the activities today and were supportive of each other. They did great this week at giving each other space to feedback on their advert and to listen to the other group when they were giving feedback on theirs. E and S seem to be spending some time with each other out with the group which appears to be becoming a positive friendship.”

 “It is clear the children are becoming more supportive of one another and are enjoying the group with each other. The children interacted really well with one another today. There was very little talking over one another and no sharing information of their peers. It was very positive to see the children working so well together and really enjoying the space they have together.” 

Several children noted in feedback sheets that they had made new friends in the groups and one suggested that this process had helped them to think through what makes a good friend:

“We learned nice things about each other and I learned about what qualities I want in a friend”

As part of the targeted sessions, children identified the individuals in their support network and reflected upon the support offered by each person in their network and any gaps.

“Through the discussions, it was evident that all the children were able to identify significant number of individuals that they were able to seek support from both within the school and outside, and both adults and peers. It was also positive to see that all of them had also put each other’s names on their list which the workers identified as a positive response within the group.”

Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers emphasised the support role of secondary school guidance teachers and 8 of the 9 children asked said that they would feel comfortable going to see their guidance teacher to get support.

“I have had a good transition to high school and even when I am in a low mood sometimes, I go to guidance for support.”

4. Opportunities and confidence to share achievements

Health and Wellbeing Youth Workers reflected that one advantage of the group was the opportunities that children gained to engage in opportunities to celebrate their uniqueness. Initially it was difficult for the children to share and recognise their achievements. Discussions about the things they enjoyed doing outside school evolved into sharing achievements being a regular part of each session Talking about things they were proud of was difficult at first, but children became more comfortable and vocal about sharing their strengths as each week passed.

• One young person shared how he was learning to fix his dirt bike’s clutch with his Dad and how he wants to be a mechanic when he is older, like his Dad’s friend. He said: “If I have the right support, I know I can get there.”
• Another shared that he had been helping the football coach with training the younger ones at his football club.
• A third shared how pleased he was about winning a bronze medal at the highland show for his heifer.
• Three children shared their pride at recognising that they are very talented at coding and that this is something to be proud of. “We thought everyone could do this stuff but our tech teacher had told us that he is going to need to design new lessons as we are weeks ahead of the class."

5. Confidence to manage transition to high school

The transition to high school was an important part of the context for the programme. Working with children over a longer timeframe allowed the children time to build their trust and confidence in communicating their feelings and needs. The individualised support available prior to and during the transition process supported the children to address issues and concerns before they escalated.

In one group, when staff asked what the group wanted to focus on, they were told that they were anxious about the transition but didn’t want to focus on it too much as it might make them even more anxious.

“All the children had a deep understanding of what anxiety meant for them and were also respectful of other’s experience of it. They were reflective and were able to also provide space for others in the group. Most of the anxieties shared within the group were about their transition to senior school.”

Children worked with MYPAS staff to learn and adapt new skills and strategies to help them in their transition journey. Any additional concerns that emerged during the early period of high school were promptly identified and addressed, and children were supported to know who they would seek support from regarding concerns or difficulties. This proactive approach provided support throughout the transition process and led to potential challenges being mitigated before they escalated, whilst providing opportunities to improve resilience and wellbeing.

Staff observed changes including increased self-awareness, improved communication, enhanced problem-solving skills, and strengthened relationships. This sustained support and guidance during the critical transition period ultimately empowered children with the resilience, confidence, and skills needed for promoting overall wellbeing and a smoother transition to high school.

All children who completed feedback forms said that they felt that the programme had helped them to feel prepared for the transition to high school. In particular they suggested that the teamwork required for the activities in the summer programme helped them to develop skills for the transition.

“Yes [I felt more confident about starting high school]. The P7 teachers scared me about high school but you guys made it less scary.” (pupil N)

Multiple children talked about the project helping them to build friendships that they anticipate will help them in the transition:

“I am certainly a lot more confident to start senior school and have also made really good friends with E from the group who I meet every day in the nurture room or during lunch. The group helped me to talk about things and participating in the activities made me feel good.”

“Sometimes I feel shy, but I like to stand back and watch people and see if they look not too wild but fun and see if I would like to be friends. Then I smile and say hi. On the transition days new people came up to me and we had a laugh together.”

In feedback for one of the groups a young person provided the feedback that they had learned “about how our feelings make us behave”. This shows an awareness of the connection between emotions and behaviour, that an ability to express feelings may lead to behaviour change.

“R stated that she found the groups in school the most helpful. She still has her coping strategies box and uses the strategies from it a lot. She finds it very helpful” 

During the sessions the workers and children discussed how these techniques and approaches learned could be used in their day-to-day lives:

“The session was concluded by providing the children with some party blowers to practice mindful breathing. The aim of the party blower was for them to breathe in deeply and blow really slowly so that it would make a sustained sound, to practice breathing mindfully. The children immediately identified how they would use this in day to day life.” 

"All of the children engaged really well in the session today and it was clear they really benefited from having the space to express their opinion and to be listened to and be heard. All three children have identified this as being an issue for them in the past and at present and feel they have been labelled as the ‘bad boys’ in the school and often get blamed for incidents that have not been instigated by them. We had discussions about having a session helping them to communicated their needs in a way that they can be listened to and be heard and to help them to speak up for themselves. They agreed they would find this useful.”

Space was also created for children to share occasions where they had used these techniques and approaches in between the sessions. Children shared:

“I remembered my breathing two times this week and it did help calm me down.”

“I was starting to get worried last night but I remembered about my happy list and went on my game and then I forgot about it.” 

“I think I’m good at making myself feel better now, I know that I can speak to my Gran and have lots of things I can do when I feel stressed. I have my hot shower in the dark, listen to music, read my books a lot. I ask to go for a walk up the hill with my mum and dad on weekends and I always feel good after.”

“I used to stay quiet, so I didn’t get in trouble but I told Dad that it upsets me when he argues with mum and the next time they started arguing, Dad stopped and said, we shouldn’t be arguing in front of A. I didn’t think speaking would make any difference but it did.”

Similarly, children who had engaged in one-to-one support shared how they used the techniques:

“I haven’t been worried, I have been using my breathing and my happy list and it really helped me not worry as much.”

There is significant evidence that the targeted wellbeing sessions made a difference for the children who took part, both in terms of the process of being part of a small group that celebrates their individuality, the tools and approaches they learned and the opportunity to build new friendships. These benefits of belonging, positive peer and adult relationships, and coping strategies are all protective factors that support positive mental health and wellbeing.

Although it is early days, there is some evidence that these gains will support the children in their transitions to high school.

“Last year MYPAS did some work with our P7 class and then some 1:1 sessions which were invaluable…”
- Member of school management team

Background

In the original MEAP proposal, one test of change and £30,000 was reserved for a young person led intervention. Midlothian Youth Platform (MYP) were key stakeholders in developing the proposal. The aim for this test of change was to engage with a wider group of young people to identify and implement this test of change. To this end, the project employed a youth participation officer and set up a youth panel to develop youth-led proposals.

However, for multiple reasons, this approach was not successful. The COVID-19 pandemic brought particular challenges for workers engaging with young people and for young people with other priorities. The youth participation officer moved to a new job and the steering group shifted to a different approach.

This report documents the learning and impact from implementing this approach, including the process of implementing a youth-led test of change and the specific youth-led test of change that was chosen.

Identify the test of change

The MEAP Steering Group commissioned Young Scot to work with young people from Midlothian Youth Platform (MYP) supported by Community Lifelong Learning and Employability (CLLE) staff to identify the youth-led test of change. This process was informed by:

• A 2018 survey on mental health carried out by MYP
• A community planning session with 70+ pupils from across Midlothian.

In both the survey and the community planning session, the importance of safe spaces for young people contrasted with a lack of places for young people to go. Over five discussion-based sessions a group of 6 young people identified a youth-led wellbeing space as the test of change that they would like to take forward. They identified that, in order to be safe, effective and protected, the space needed to be exclusively used as a youth-led youth space. They also started to think about the characteristics of this space and early priorities were ensuring that the space was comfortable, safe and flexible – with different areas so that young people could choose between different activities.

Implement the youth-led wellbeing space

MEAP identified a space in One Dalkeith, a community-owned Hub in the centre of Dalkeith, and in November 2022 signed a lease for one year as a dedicated youth-led space. The group started preparing and designing the space, including getting a new floor fitted, painting the walls and beginning to source and buy equipment. They called the space ‘One Youth’, reflecting its location in One Dalkeith and the vision to provide one space open to all young people in Midlothian.

The group worked with a consultant to develop a theory of change for the youth. Based on the outcomes from a consultation event with 27 young people, and discussions about the characteristics of a safe space, the group developed a group agreement for One Youth.

One Youth then opened up to a range of groups including:

• Midlothian Youth Platform
• Champs (care experienced young people)
• Young people’s housing support group
• Bus buddies (developing independent travel skills)
• 1:1 work (a space for key workers to provide support to individual young people)
• Butty and Blether group
• Lunch club volunteers (preparing food for One Dalkeith’s supper club)
• GGs (girl’s group)
• An event run by local police officers to build relationships with local young people
• Open youth work sessions

While the first five of the groups listed above were happening prior to One Youth in different spaces, the last five were new activities that were implemented as a result of the One Youth space. The activities were staffed primarily by youth workers from Community Lifelong Learning and Employability (CLLE), although some groups were led by staff from other organisations. At the beginning of the test of change it had been hoped that there would be more open youth work sessions than ultimately took place; this was primarily as a result of the challenges with staffing following budget cuts for CLLE, which led to a reduction in staff capacity and fewer youth workers available to work with this test of change. Open youth work takes time to develop and, once youth workers had been identified, we simply did not have as much time as had been anticipated.

The location of One Youth was also important. Several of the activities above – notably Butty and Blether, open youth work sessions and the event run with Police Scotland – attracted young people who happened to be passing the building or in the local area. Just as with youth work, developing this local presence takes time and young people were only beginning to be aware of One Youth towards the end of the test of change.

Promote and sustain One Youth

Early in the process of implementing One Youth it became apparent that one year would not be sufficient to fully implement the test of change in the way that was hoped. The lease for the space at One Dalkeith was only available for one year. A third strand of activity therefore became working towards demonstrating the value of a dedicated youth-led youth space.

Young people in the One Youth team built and sustained through regular contact a relationship with the local Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP). They organised an opportunity for him to walk around the local area looking at available properties that could potentially be used for One Youth. The MSP has advocated for the project by instigating conversations about the ongoing need for One Youth with Senior Leadership at Midlothian Council.

Members of the One Youth team and wider MEAP steering group continue at the time of writing this report to look at alternative properties. This is discussed in more detail below.

Recognising that this is not a project that will be fully realised at the end of the test of change, the One Youth team are also liaising with other similar youth wellbeing projects in Scotland and are organising visits to get inspiration and share ideas. This is also discussed in more detail below.

The test of change started with a core project team of 8 young people including young people who were involved in identifying the test of change and other young people identified through MEAP steering group member organisations. Core project team members who stick with the process through to the end will receive a £150 stipend to say thank you for all of their work on the project.

Our work extended to other young people and other key stakeholders (including youth workers and the MEAP Steering Group) to realise the test of change and provide evidence of its effectiveness.  

In February 2023 the project team facilitated a consultation event with 27 young people where they discussed what young people would like One Youth to look like, how they would like the space to feel and what activities they would like to see happening in the space.  

It is difficult to say how many young people in total attended One Youth as some young people attended multiple groups and some groups were drop-in and did not keep complete records of attendees. Over 200 individual young people attended groups in the space over the period from May – November 2023 and many of those young people attended regularly, some of them attending multiple groups weekly. 

Before groups started meeting in One Youth, young people who attended the consultation event overwhelmingly reacted positively to the idea of a youth-led wellbeing space, with 21 out of 26 saying that they would attend the space.

In October/November 2023 we attended a series of groups in One Youth to ask young people about their experiences in the space. The first question asked was how young people feel when they are in One Youth. By far the most common answer to this was ‘safe’ followed by ‘comfortable’ and ‘accepted’.

Inevitably, when asked about One Youth, young people often talked about their relationships with staff and their peers in the space, with several stating that they felt ‘listened to’ and ‘had fun’. While these are obviously positive reactions, we wanted to try to unpick One Youth (the new space) from relationships with staff and peers that may have existed independently of One Youth. Therefore, we asked young people and staff what made this space different from other spaces where they had attended groups or activities, and a few responses are shared below:

• It is only for young people – don’t have to worry about annoying other people (young person)
• Nobody tells you what to do when we are here (young person)
• It’s informal – we can just have a laugh (young person)
• There isn’t any pressure to come (young person)
• You can come even if you just want to be (young person)
• You can say what you want (young person)
• It’s a place to deflate (young person)
• It’s safe – you are not going to get harassed (young person)
• There is space to move around and do different things. If a discussion is difficult I can go and sit on the couch for a bit (young person)
• The location is important – it gets passing trade, there are good transport links and the area is well lit (staff member)
• It is a space for organic conversations (staff member)

Several young people who were members of groups that had met in another venue before One Youth compared the two settings, with one saying that One Youth is “better than the last place we met – it’s our room, can do what we want to do without feeling that we are being judged - we can play music and no one will complain! I’m more relaxed here.” Similarly another young person noted that “you feel safe to be yourself cos you are not being judged – the place before was limiting us because we were worried we’d be judged”. Yet another noted that they felt more comfortable to invite guests to their group at One Youth because it “feels more like our space”.

Community Lifelong Learning and Employability (CLLE) youth workers expressed some frustration about the time it took to open up One Youth to groups because the space was so useful. When they did start to use it, several youth workers talked about how One Youth had inspired them to work in new ways, with one staff member who had only worked with individuals before talking about plans to do more groupwork in the future because they had seen how successful it was, and another setting up groups to specifically take advantage of the location and ‘passing trade’ that One Youth provided.

There was some limited evidence that wider stakeholders were beginning to have positive reactions to One Youth. For example, a community member dropped into One Youth while the Butty and Blether group was on and gave the member of staff a cheque for £200 to contribute because they saw the value of the group.

The group of young people leading the development of One Youth received an award at the Midlothian’s Young People Awards 2023, in recognition for their contribution to local community and the role the One Youth team played in making a real difference in Midlothian for young people.

Young people using One Youth

Young people who attended One Youth were able to identify a wide range of different things that they had learned from their time in the space. Some of these were skills from specific activities in which they had participated, others were social learning from their interactions with other people in One Youth.

The One Youth team identified multiple learnings from the process of developing One Youth.

Most importantly we have come to understand the importance of safe spaces to and for young people. We had multiple opportunities to explore what a safe space is for young people, and this is reflected in the group agreement that is outlined above.

For staff in the group two key learnings have been:

• Young people identify safe spaces as vital for their mental health. Exploring this further, the group were able to clearly articulate that the primary protective mechanism that safe spaces offer is the opportunity for young people to be themselves and to learn about who it is that they are and want to be.
• That a safe space includes a flexible space where young people can do what it is that they need to do – especially when home isn’t a fully safe space. This might mean that a young person needs to sleep or do nothing, and we need not to put pressure on young people to act in particular ways that we as adults perceive to be the ‘right way’.

We also experienced a difficult learning curve about the challenges of implementing a youth-led initiative in an adult-led system. In particular we learned:

• Young people’s timescales, staff timescales and funding timescales are not always the same because of different pressures and needs – towards the end of the test of change we believe that we are beginning to communicate and effectively negotiate these different needs together.
• The things that young people want do not fit into council silos that exist in terms of departments and budgets. 
• Not to underestimate the value of established networks  – especially when engaging with young people – and of recruiting champions and advocates – particularly when advocating for One Youth’s sustainability strategy.
• The challenges of separating the value of the space and the people who you interact with in the space, but also the opportunities and freedom that the space offers workers to undertake excellent youth work.

Wider stakeholders

Wider stakeholders in the MEAP Steering Group and Midlothian Council Community Planning GIRFEC Board learned that young people in Midlothian think that the single most important intervention that would support their mental health is a dedicated youth-led wellbeing space.

All wider stakeholders who have engaged with the One Youth group have learned that young people are informed, engaged and can usefully contribute to council decision-making processes. This is evidenced through opportunities that have arisen from One Youth including, for example, involving young people in local development action planning. Although opportunities to engage young people in decision making already existed through Midlothian Youth Platform and other ad-hoc events, One Youth has provided a focus for this involvement and created opportunities for different groups to come together.

The One Youth Team are hopeful that the wider stakeholders have learned that youth work support is early mental health support. This doesn’t only apply to youth work that directly addresses the topic of mental health, but to all youth work that provides opportunities for young people to build relationships, feel safe and be themselves.

Particularly given the timescale of this test of change, it is difficult to demonstrate any concrete behaviour change in young people attending One Youth that can be attributed to the space. However, several young people pointed to new friendships that they had gained that will hopefully sustain beyond the group. It is also hoped that several groups that were started at One Youth will sustain beyond the original space – but this is further complicated by key staff members moving to new positions. 

There is, however, a growing commitment to the sustained development of a dedicated youth-led youth wellbeing space from the Midlothian Community Planning Partnership. This is evidenced through:

• Ongoing conversations at senior leadership level (e.g. at GIRFEC board) about the importance of youth spaces
• Increased young people’s involvement in wider council processes
• Since the lease on the original space came to an end, a temporary space has been identified. Although this space is not fully fit for purpose, there is high level commitment to – and progress being made towards – sourcing a new space.

The One Youth team continue to work together to advocate for this new space and develop their ideas for when it is identified. After having to move out of the original One Youth space, young people from the One Youth team visited a dedicated youth-led youth wellbeing space run by Elgin Youth Development Group that demonstrated many of the characteristics that they are working towards. In addition to providing many concrete ideas for activities and possible future approaches and funding opportunities, young people said that the primary benefit of the visit was hearing how the Elgin Youth Cafe had taken many years to establish and had increased their determination to keep going and their belief that they can achieve their goal of a dedicated youth-led youth wellbeing space in Midlothian. 

 To this end, the One Youth team identified things that we do differently as a result of this test of change:

• Communicate more effectively and honestly about the different sets of needs and ways to meet them
• Communicate more effectively about roles, realistic expectations and ability to meet those expectations
• Make better use of social media and traditional media - for example young people from the team contributed to a local radio show to promote One Youth and intend to canvas support in the local community for the ongoing project
• Develop key strategic relationships with people in positions to support the project.

Conclusion: this is not the end!

“The problem is that young people say they want it and we do mean it but it can be really difficult to make yourself do anything. I was shitting myself when I first came here. I have bad anxiety and it’s always difficult to get out of the house, but when I get here it’s a relief. When you are not confident it takes a lot to get used to a new space. You have to build connections and the place has to be familiar and safe.” (young person attending a group at One Youth)

Young people in Midlothian have said that the intervention that they would most like to see to protect their mental health and wellbeing is a dedicated safe space, led by young people, where they can go to be themselves.

This test of change is important not only because of the space that it has provided but also because of the process that it has supported. It has demonstrated the importance of valuing and listening to all young people, not just high achievers in school, so that they feel valued, connected and seen.

MEAP enabled a group of young people, supported by staff, to test out this intervention and, despite many challenges and a significant learning curve, this report demonstrates that their determination and perseverance has paid off. It also demonstrates that this is not a discrete ‘test of change’ but an ongoing value-led initiative and that the group recognise that they are in this for the long-term with an ongoing belief in One Youth and determination to make it a sustainable reality. As one member of the team said: “young people have enough people who give up on them, One Youth is an opportunity not to be another person who gives up”.

The last word goes to young people who attended One Youth and who describe the importance of One Youth for youth mental health.