Wellbeing While Waiting (WWW) is a partnership project led by the UCL’s Social Biobehavioural Research Group, funded by the Prudence Trust. Young people referred for NHS mental health support currently face long waiting lists, and up to three quarters experience deterioration in their mental health while waiting. Social prescribing offers an opportunity to help young people in this situation, by connecting them to non-medical forms of community support such as skills development, peer support, befriending and social or cultural activities. Over the last three years, through the WWW research project, we have worked with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) across England to develop and test a social prescribing model that can be scaled nationally to help many more young people.
Supported by StreetGames, a team of ten young people acted as an advisory group throughout the project, providing valuable insight and reflections on the processes and the findings, providing inspiration for disseminating results to their peers. This infographic shares more about how they were involved and their experience of the project.