Back in October 2010, Comic Relief published a report, undertaken by Warwick University, into the Role of Information and Communication Technology in Young People and Mental Health.
As a leading investor in digital projects that present innovative approaches to tackling established social challenges, we were particularly interested in their findings.
Meanwhile the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Mental Health Foundation via the Right Here, project was researching the best approaches for delivering mental health services to 16-25 year olds online.
Keen to develop this work further and build on the research findings a natural alliance was formed.
Following a Comic Relief led consultation event in April 2011 a tender to develop and deliver innovation labs to explore how online and digital tools can support and improve young people’s mental health was created.
The Labs, the first of their kind in the UK offer young people a chance to influence how they are planned and delivered. This ground-breaking project will give young people the opportunity to work with mental health, youth work and design professionals to develop possible solutions to the mental health challenges they face.
Cernis and their partners won the tender on October 1st 2011 and have been working hard to organically develop the Labs project alongside a team of people including the funders, the Right Here project and a panel of young people recruited by Right Here to guide the work.
It’s been an exciting journey so far with the recruitment of more young people, professionals and designers to attend the Labs and the rapid development of an online social network to ‘incubate’ the ideas developed in the first lab, that took place on 10th December 2011.
For a little more insight into what happened, Chris O’Sullivan from the Mental Health Foundation gives us his personal reflections from the day.
The second lab will be taking place in February. To monitor progress, visit www.innovationlabs.org.uk
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