Research centre supports awareness week for children’s mental health
22 February 2022
The Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health has created original artwork graphics in partnership with young people in support of Children’s Mental Health Week.
The research centre, which is focused on youth mental health and made up of experts from Cardiff and Swansea University, has co-produced content with the Wolfson Centre Youth Advisors to mark the awareness week.
Children’s Mental Health Week is an annual awareness week organised by the charity Place2Be and this year’s theme was “Growing Together”.
The Wolfson Centre Youth Advisors reflected on this theme in their January meeting and, working with the centre’s staff, created five original social media graphics to showcase their own reflections on the theme of growth.
Emma Meilak, who facilitates the youth advisory groups, said: “We asked our Youth Advisors to reflect on the topic of growth in a recent session, to tie in with this year’s theme for Children’s Mental Health Week. The young people shared their thoughts and offered quotes on ways in which they have grown in the past year and how they feel is the best way to help others to grow.
“As always, the Youth Advisors surpassed our expectations with thoughtful and powerful reflections which served as inspiration for social media graphics and a piece for the Wolfson Centre blog.”
Becs Parker, the Wolfson Centre’s communications officer, added: “It was great to work together with the young people again and create vibrant and exciting content for this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week. Co-production and collaboration with young people are really important to us and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with our Youth Advisors on creative projects like this in the coming months.”
Emma Meilak concluded: “It was so interesting to reflect on the theme of growth as we reach the six months mark of our first year of meetings.
"We also used the awareness week as an opportunity to share the young people’s Group Promise, a commitment on how we and the groups will behave and support each other in our monthly sessions. The poster of the pledge was also designed by one of our members, another example of our partnership in action.”
“Our Youth Advisors’ contribution to creative opportunities like this, as well as guiding our mental health research priorities, help us to continue to embed the experiences and voices of young people at the heart of the Wolfson Centre’s work.”
Read more about the Wolfson Centre’s campaign for Children’s Mental Health Week, as well as other pieces of work created collaboratively with young people, on the research centre’s blog.
