Supporting mental health and care for the wellbeing of vulnerable children and young people

"Child & Youth wellbeing and mental health first"

This multi-country technical support project aims at improving the provision of mental health, wellbeing and psychosocial support to children and young people. It will be implemented in Spain (concretely in Andalusia), Cyprus, Italy and Slovenia.

Context

Mental health and wellbeing among children and young people are a growing concern in Europe and have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The multi-country project has been identified as Flagship number 9 of the European Communication “A comprehensive approach to mental health” from June 2023. It will deliver on the comprehensive approach on mental health by developing tools and building capacity across sectors to address healthy lifestyles and the prevention of mental health problems of youth and children.

The project is in line with the European Child Guarantee, that aims to prevent and combat social exclusion by guaranteeing the access of children in need to a set of key services, including health, social and education services.

Support to be delivered

The project will support four EU Member States to undertake reforms that improve access to mental health care and services for youth and children. It will be implemented by UNICEF from December 2023 until December 2025.

The project will start with a comprehensive analysis of the policies and programmes supporting youth wellbeing and mental health in the specific EU Member State, highlighting the good practices and bottlenecks.

It will provide capacity-building to address the fragmentation of health, social and education services, that often lead to uncoordinated interventions. It will help to enhance professionals’ knowledge, awareness and capacity regarding support services that are not part of their own sector to ensure a timely and effective delivery of services to address mental health care needs. The participation of children and young people in the design and co-creation of programmes and recommendations on youth mental health and wellbeing will be included, to lead to an effective intervention involving the entire community.

Results to be achieved

This multi-country project aims at improving the provision of mental health and psychosocial support to children and young people. The multi-country project will comprise a set of tailormade actions in which all beneficiary authorities will take part with the objectives of delivering adequate outputs to national and regional specificities. By the end of the multi-country project, it is expected that national/regional authorities will be equipped with a cross-sectoral framework for developing and implementing a model for mental health provision for youth and children and will have the necessary capacity and tools to actively address the issues in close cooperation with youth and children.