My-wellbeing Online Emotional and Wellbeing Support is for young people aged 11-19 living or attending school in Chester and Cheshire West. It went ‘live’ in December 2015 and offers young people aged 11-19 who live or attend school or college in the Cheshire West and Chester area, physical and emotional health & well-being support via email.
My-wellbeing Online Emotional and Wellbeing Support is for young people aged 11-19 living or attending school in Chester and Cheshire West. The Mywellbeing Online service is part of the Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s (CWP) 5-19 Health and Wellbeing Service. The 5-19 Health and Well-being Service is delivered by School Nursing teams who provide a range of physical and emotional health services in line with key Public Health priorities, to children and young people such as immunisations, health screening, support in school or community settings, drop in services and safeguarding; empowering young people to make good choices about their health and well-being.
It went ‘live’ in December 2015 and offers young people aged 11-19 who live or attend school or college in the Cheshire West and Chester area, physical and emotional health & well-being support via email. It has been developed with the valuable input from children and young people. Our promotion is informed by 6 interactive focus groups working with boys and girls in years 7 -13 in local secondary schools (ages 11- 18). This included young people with protected characteristics and young people with mild to moderate learning disabilities and/ or specific learning difficulties.
The young people communicated that a direct link to the online team via each school / colleges’ desktop would highlight the service is trusted and is safe; this would reassure both themselves and their parents. Reassurance was also commutated through the knowledge that the service delivered was an NHS service, and so they felt that the team had the knowledge and competence to help them, therefore, increasing the prevalence of engagement. Following the feedback from our focus groups, the Service is working in partnership with our Schools to ensure that ‘Mywellbeing Online’ is accessible for its students. Younger students suggested information about the mywellbeing online team could be available in their school planners, this is something that is actively being perused for the 2016-17 academic year.
Our children and young people suggested that online resources about specific issues would be helpful and that reading other young people’s experiences of certain issues would be a useful addition. The team have developed information and worksheets that can be utilized during our sessions with individual young people and have liaised closely with the website team so the information is available on www.mywell-being.org.uk too. The team have approached the West Cheshire CAMHS participation group ‘Listen Up’ to see if they would like to contribute their experiences to the pages.
Young People in the focus group have volunteered to be ‘secret shoppers’ to test and review the Service to ensure that it is working as it should, and meets the needs of our children and young people. The Service feels this is an awesome idea and will be recruiting young people to fulfil these roles in the near future.
Promoting the service – The promotion of the online support service is a collaborative approach:- School Nurses promote and sign post children and young people to www.mywell-being.org.uk and our self-referral form during immunisation, health screening, and during their drop in sessions in schools; Leaflets and contact cards have been developed by the Service and created which can be given out to children and young people, which have a QR code printed so that Children and young people can discreetly scan the code and have immediate access to the online contact form; Young people who have been referred to CAMHS, but who do not meet the threshold, are signposted by CAMHS to the ‘Mywellbeing Online’ service to ensure they are able to access health and well-being support by the correct service.
Children and young people who have engaged with CAMHS and their programme is coming to an end, the Service signposts that young person to the website, so they can access information to promote recovery and help increase their resilience. The 5-19 Health and Wellbeing Service has actively liaised and promoted the online support services both externally with partners including the CCG and Local Authority, and internally within the Trust. This enables all of our partners to signpost effectively. The Service can also be accessed via the 111 directory for Cheshire West Services. Young adults aged 16 plus are directed to the online service by the local IAPT service.
Close liaison with adult IAPT and 16-18 ensures that young adults who are unable to access face to face interventions are aware of mywellbeing online and can self-refer for support. The team of experienced online mental health workers have backgrounds in school-nursing, mental health nursing, counselling and CAMHS which ensures no issue raised by a young person is too big or too small. Robust governance and protocols are in place to ensure that Trust guidelines are followed and that safeguarding procedures are robust and utilised as appropriate.
Young people self-refer to the Service by completing the online contact form on www.my-wellbeing.org.uk They receive an automatic response which lets them know when the team is online. The team member on shift acknowledges the referral from the young person via email to introduce ourselves and advising when we will be available online until. The team member then waits for a young person to initiate the ‘drop in’ session. The team is online in the evening and during the weekend to ensure that we are accessible when needed most, and able to respond in a timely manner.
The content of the ‘chats’ are as diverse as the young people who are accessing the service. Young people are encouraged to contact the team as often as they feel they need to, however, if the team feels regular ‘booked’ sessions would help the young person, then they are offered a block of sessions with the same team member at a regular time slot to ensure continuity, build a sound therapeutic relationship that fosters trust, therefore empowering the individual.
Approach – The team utilizes a Solution Focused Therapeutic approach to working with the young person towards Goal Based Outcomes, we have access to the vast resources of CWP CAMHS, www.mymind.org.uk such as The Next Step Cards, podcasts within ‘The Box’ and the innovative 4D Toolkit, which have been created for young people by young people. This increases autonomy and resilience in young people, rather than fostering dependency on the service and thus a sense of learned helplessness.
The ‘Mywellbeing Online Team’ work as part of a Multi-Disciplinary Approach in relation to young people’s psychological and emotional wellbeing. We are in regular dialogue with Tier 2 CAMHS, Tier 3 CAMHS, Adult IAPT Service and 16-18 CAMHS, to liaise and discuss where we feel that young people best sit in terms of service provision to best meet their needs. For example, the team may identify that the Young Person would benefit from a session with their school nurse for support around a specific health issue, this is easily communicated, confidentially and discreetly and then arranged, being respectful of the young person’s autonomy and boundaries. We have worked with one young person who we identified was in need of specialist from CWP’s 16-18 team. We were able to support the young person through an appointment with her GP to discuss her mental health by utilising www.docready.org . This young person is due to begin CBT within the next few weeks.
The ‘Mywellbeing Online’ team is integrated into each of the Locality School Nursing teams, and attend their business meetings in order to review pathways and processes to ensure a seamless and streamlined approach to care delivery for Young People. The team has fostered close working relationship with CWP’s communication and engagement team to ensure the service is effectively promoted utilizing a range of media.
Review and Evaluation – We are continually reviewing and evaluating Mywellbeing Online Service. This helps us to target support to meet the needs of young people. Ongoing focus groups take place to ensure that as a team we continue to offer a service that is both helpful and meaningful to young people in the local area. Feedback from young people who have accessed the service has been really positive; “I wanted to let you know how I am after 2 weeks. Things have been significantly better. The urges [have] dramatically reduced. I’m starting to see a more brighter outcome in life, just keeping pushing on down this road”
Partners – school nurses, CAMHS, adult IAPT, CCG’s, local authorities, 111, GP’s; School Nurses promote and sign post children and young people to www.mywell-being.org.uk and our self-referral form during immunisation, health screening, and during their drop in sessions in schools; Leaflets and contact cards have been developed by the Service and created which can be given out to children and young people, which have a QR code printed so that Children and young people can discreetly scan the code and have immediate access to the online contact form; Young people who have been referred to CAMHS, but who do not meet the threshold, are signposted by CAMHS to the ‘Mywellbeing Online’ service to ensure they are able to access health and well-being support by the correct service.
Children and young people who have engaged with CAMHS and their programme is coming to an end, the Service signposts that young person to the website, so they can access information to promote recovery and help increase their resilience. Close liaison with adult IAPT and 16-18 ensures that young adults who are unable to access face to face interventions are aware of mywellbeing online and can self-refer for support. The 5-19 Health and Wellbeing Service has actively liaised and promoted the online support services both externally with partners including the CCG and Local Authority, and internally within the Trust. This enables all of our partners to signpost effectively. The Service can also be accessed via the 111 directory for Cheshire West Services. Young adults aged 16 plus are directed to the online service by the local IAPT service.
The Mywellbeing Online service has been developed with the valuable input from children and young people. Our promotion is informed by 6 interactive focus groups working with boys and girls in years 7 -13 in local secondary schools (ages 11- 18). This included young people with protected characteristics and young people with mild to moderate learning disabilities and/or specific learning difficulties. Our children and young people suggested that online resources about specific issues would be helpful and that reading other young people’s experiences of certain issues would be a useful addition. The team have developed information and worksheets that can be utilized during our sessions with individual young people and have liaised closely with the website team so the information is available on www.mywell- being.org.uk too.
The team have approached the West Cheshire CAMHS participation group ‘Listen Up’ to see if they would like to contribute their experiences to the pages. Young People in the focus group have volunteered to be ‘secret shoppers’ to test and review the Service to ensure that it is working as it should, and meets the needs of our children and young people. The Service feels this is an awesome idea and will be recruiting young people to fulfil these roles in the near future. The Standard Operational Procedures are being refined based upon the experiences of the team to ensure that SOP’s remain relevant. The team has the opportunity to share experiences with managers too.
We would have insisted on having instant chat facility as part of the service – this is now going to be installed retrospectively.
One of the main challenges has been to increase awareness and publicise that the service was available. This has been overcome by leaflets and contact cards distributed by school nursing staff – young people finding out about the service by word of mouth. The team has met with all the stakeholders who are able to signpost yp to the service – which both reassures them of the quality of the service and that by accessing the online team may in turn mean young people are seen earlier before their presentation becomes more complex.
Robust governance and procedures are in place. The team meets regularly for team supervision and are sufficiently skilled and passionate about the service to step up if and when required.
Not as yet, however, we are collecting data on all of the young people who are contacting the service and have both quantitative and qualitative data which can be audited in the future
We are sharing the work with of the team with school nurses, CAMHS, 16-18 team, adult IAPT, schools, CCG’s, NHS 111,
