YMCA Dialogue Wellbeing Service – YMCA DownsLink Group
The project is an innovative response to the mental health and wellbeing needs of children and young people aged four to 25 in Brighton and Hove. It offers a joined-up approach to mental health services, providing a wide variety of treatment options to suit a broad range of children and young people.
The service offers a range of innovative support options for mental health difficulties such as low mood, stress, anxiety and depression, including counselling, canine assisted therapy, play and dramatherapy, CBT, emotional wellbeing early interventions, E-Wellbeing (YMCA Dialogues new Online counselling platform) and an outreach and engagement service for hard to reach young people with mental health difficulties, Mind The Gap.
The project is part of a citywide transformation of children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing, which is designed to create an integrated pathway that includes Primary Mental Health Workers in schools and CAMHS services with whom we triage with every day. The service is able to promote the values of the third sector within an NHS framework and works alongside the client from the point of referral through to treatment, deciding together with the clinician and other professionals what the right approach will be and how they might be best supported. The YMCA Youth Advice Centre works closely with the service, providing a drop-in that young people can access every day for support and offer various treatment options.
The Brighton & Hove Wellbeing Service works as a NHS and third sector collaboration with Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust, Mind in Brighton and Hove and HERE and is ground breaking in that it is the only children & young person’s service its ability to flow data directly to NHS England.