Children and Young People’s Emotional Health, Wellbeing and Resilience Challenge

Emotional health and wellbeing is on everyone’s agenda. More children and young people are experiencing poor mental health and emotional wellbeing including rising levels of anxiety, depression and self-harm.  The demand for support is increasing across all service sectors and despite everyone’s best efforts, services for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing currently vary considerably across North Wales. Pathways are not always clear, and referrals to services are not always appropriate.

The Emotional Health Wellbeing and Resilience work stream (part of the Children and Young People’s Transformation Programme in North Wales) will develop a framework that will:

• encompass the ‘Five ways to Wellbeing’
• will be bilingual, in line with the Welsh language Act
• underpin the development of resources
• map against the developmental milestone of children aged 8 – 11 years
• be focused on early intervention for children and their families

Each core skill or behaviour has an ‘I can’ sentence from the perspective of a child / young person, parent or carer and other trusted adult.

The Challenge

The SBRI challenge is to determine the most effective digital mechanism for the content of the framework to be accessed by the end users which include the child/young person, parent/carer as well as professionals, and maintained on an on-going basis. The framework content will be evidence and practice-based, and be led by those working in the fields of mental health, education and social care.

 A solution would need to consider the following:

• Guided self-help for children and their families
• Differing end user experiences that are exciting and engaging depending on who that may be e.g. children, parents, professionals
• Easy to navigate
• The need to demonstrate bilingual capability for Phase 2
• Customisable (e.g. branding for and by 8-11 year olds)
• Can be maintained by relevant users (e.g. updating content)
• Has the ability to adapt and scale
• Be affordable, demonstrate value for money
• Being able to analyse usage

The SBRI challenge will be a 2 Phase ‘rapid’ approach detailed below, due for completion by the end of January 2022.

Challenge Structure

Phase 1

Feasibility & Demonstrator – We are looking to fund up to four projects to the value of £10,000 each, inclusive of VAT, to be delivered over a 2 month period.  Due to the rapid nature of the project, solutions at the end of this stage would be in prototype format ready to be demonstrated in the next phase.

Phase 2

Development & Testing – The most promising Phase 1 projects may have the opportunity to access additional funding to undertake further development and robust testing. Successful applicants can apply for a share of £40,000 inclusive of VAT, with the intention to take forward up to two Phase 1 projects (£20,000 each) to provide assurance, validation and a small live proof of concept.  The solution at the end of this phase should be commercially viable and ready for purchase.