The Big Lottery funded HeadStart Programme gave 12 local authorities some money to pilot different approaches to supporting young people to cope with difficult circumstances and prevent common mental health problems before they become serious.
The focus of HeadStart is on ‘…locally developed, cross-disciplinary, multi-layered and integrated prevention strategy.’ They were really keen that areas thought through the sustainability of their initiatives and that they worked from, and contributed to, the development of a robust evidence base around ‘what works’ – all the kind of stuff that Boingboing gets excited about. Each area has to plan to work at different levels, including some provision for all children aged between 10 and 16 years, and some for more targetted groups of young people.
Boingboing provided lots of input during Phase 2 of the project and a lot of the areas used the Resilience Framework in their plans and activities. Now in Phase 3, Boingboing receives funding to support HeadStart Blackpool to implement their resilience programme to support the young people of Blackpool.
