Customer Profile
Carlisle Eden Mind (CE Mind) is a charity offering a range of services for children and young people (CYP) across Cumbria.
They work to educate, support and encourage the children and young people of Cumbria to understand their mental health.
Industry
- Charity/third sector/voluntary sector
- Not for profit
- Healthcare
Programmes
- Space from Anxiety (CYP)
- Space from Anxiety (Student)
- Space from Depression (Student)
- Space for Positive Body Image (Student)
- Space for Resilience (Student)
- Space from Stress (Student)
- Supporting an Anxious Child (CYP)
- Supporting an Anxious Teen (CYP)
1 in 8 children and young people aged between 5 and 19 have a diagnosable mental health condition in the UK.
COVID has led to a significant increase in demand for mental health support from children and young people who have the added uncertainty of the pandemic alongside the usual pressures they face, including from their studies.
Introducing SilverCloud® by Amwell® platform has helped CE Mind to reach three times as many children and young people and provided a new, convenient and efficient way of Cumbria’s children and young people accessing support and building their awareness and understanding of their mental health. It has helped CE Mind to find new ways of working and offer different support for children and young people across Cumbria.
Context
Carlisle Eden Mind has been delivering mental health services for over 25 years. Over that time, they have seen the demand for children and young people’s services increase significantly, including during the COVID pandemic.
They work directly with children and young people on a one-to-one basis through the ‘Your Voice’ advocacy service. This service is aimed at helping young people to use their voice to access the support they need and to understand their own mental health.
CE Mind offer a wide range of training for children and young people as well as for adults who are caring for, supporting, or working with young people, sometimes through schools and colleges.
The ongoing challenge for young people of being overwhelmed by schoolwork and other normal life pressures have been coupled recently with the specific challenges of the COVID pandemic and the uncertainties about the future it has brought.
Stigma
There remains a stigma for young people in speaking up and seeking the support they need with their mental health.
Geography
Cumbria is a large and largely rural area, which brings significant logistical challenges in physically reaching young people, many of whom live some distance from CE Mind offices. This can result in significant travel time and cost.
Funding
Like all third sector organisations, CE Mind faces the ongoing challenge of securing funding to allow it to deliver its services, many of which rely on face-to-face support and require travel to cover the large geographic area of Cumbria.
Communication
Getting messages to children and young people, either directly or via schools, is vital in order to raise awareness of mental health challenges and the support that is available.
Capacity
To maximise the impact that CE Mind has, it seeks to partner with schools to help them to build their own awareness, understanding and capacityto support children and young people. CE Mind has worked to support the rollout of mental health first aid in sixth form schools/ colleges to help create a wellinformed group of young people who can provide help and support to their peers
They are using the online programmes as a preventative measure, focussing on trying to help children and young people to raise their understanding of their own mental health and spotting warning signs that they need to take action before their issues become more serious.
CE Mind have used SilverCloud® mental health app to complement its face-to-face contact – not to replace it. For some children and young people there remains no substitute to human, personal contact. The digital option with online support from a CE Mind specialist however, is a big help in reaching more people across Cumbria.
Approach
CE Mind uses SilverCloud® programmes as part of a blended model of support for children and young people and schools, with the continuation of CE Mind’s face-to-face ‘Your Advocacy’ service, alongside the digital option that SilverCloud® programmes provide.
It uses SilverCloud® in both a supported and unsupported way with invite and self-sign up within the programmes in use. In a supported capacity, children and young people receive additional coaching and support (progress review) online from a CE Mind specialist as well as have 24/7 access to clinically proven tools and programmes within the platform.
CE Mind has rolled out seven programmes
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Space from Anxiety (CYP)
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Space from Anxiety (Student)
-
Space from Depression (Student)
-
Space for Positive Body Image (Student)
-
Space for Resilience (Student)
-
Space from Stress (Student)
-
Supporting an Anxious Child (CYP)
-
Supporting an Anxious Teen (CYP)
Sometimes they are not motivated to engage with mental health support from CE Mind or because they feel “others have it worse than me” or because their negative emotional experiences are affecting their motivation to engage and seek help. Having the SilverCloud® digital option provides them with a convenient and low intensity way of exploring their issues online, without always the need for face-to-face support.
This has resulted in helping individuals address specific issues through the online programmes but also helped to build confidence to recognise where further face-to-face help is needed.
Before the introduction of the SilverCloud® platform, CE Mind were supporting around 30 young people at any one time, on a rolling/ongoing basis. This number is nearer to 90 now that SilverCloud has been added to the CE Mind toolkit.
The SilverCloud® programmes provide a different level of support – not a replacement for face-to-face and supported contact - but it allows CE Minds to reach more people - nearly three times as many at any one time. The inclusion of the digital programmes has allowed CE Mind to work differently and provide various levels of support, offering a wider menu of options for children and young people in the type of support that may work for them
The rollout of SilverCloud® by CE Mind has resulted successfully raising awareness of mental health issues and of the help available to local young people. In some cases, accessing the SilverCloud programmes has helped to build the confidence of young people to seek further help either online only or using the online option to then highlight the need for greater face-to-face support.
Using SilverCloud® programmes has proved cost effective and efficient for CE Mind, allowing it to reach more people and reduce the time they would normally spend on travel to access these people face-to-face. In some cases it has cut the support time for a review session from 2.5 hours to 15 minutes, as review sessions can be done online using the SilverCloud platform, dramatically reducing the travel time that is often required within Cumbria.
In some cases it has cut the support time for a review session from 2.5 hours to 15 minutes
Goal 1
Provide mental health services to more children and young people at a lower overall cost.
Goal 2
Reduce stigma of mental health services through successfully raising awareness of mental health issues by providing children and young people an additional level of support.
Goal 3
Help build confidence in children and young people to understand their mental health and seek further support (if required) by providing them with a convenient online platform to access mental health information and support. of mental health issues by providing children and young people an additional level of support.
As the demand for mental health support grows, we know the effect this can have on healthcare organisations. So, whether it’s removing some of the pressure on clinical staff, or providing scalable access to more people, SilverCloud® by Amwell® can help meet the diverse needs of patients and deliver results comparable to traditional face-to-face therapy.
SilverCloud® by Amwell® brings 18 years of clinically-backed research and digital innovation into the hands of patients. Empowering them to better self manage mild to moderate mental health conditions. Joining them on their own personal, self-driven mental wellbeing journey, whilst taking the strain off mental health practitioners to continue delivering a high level of care.