Prioritising Young Londoners

Thrive LDN have worked with partners across the capital to deliver a number of projects and programmes.

Below, we have included an overview of these activities to date where you can find out more about how we have supported young Londoners over the years.

Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA)

In 2018, the Mayor of London’s Young Londoners Fund, provided funding to support Thrive LDN, Mental Health First Aid England (MHFAE) and research partners at University College London (UCL) to work in partnership to deliver and evaluate YMHFA training to support educational staff and youth sector leads.

 From October 2018 – March 2022, this training has upskilled over 4,000 school and youth sector staff to support children and young people (aged 8-19 years old). Additionally, this programme has also trained 119 YMHFA instructors across London’s boroughs enabling them to deliver their own training to schools.  Find out more about the impact of the training here.

With remaining funding, in 2022 we commissioned MHFAE instructors to deliver a series of topic specific ‘top-up’ sessions for those who have undertaken the training. You can access these sessions free, via our Thrive LDN channel

The evaluation of this programme aims to determine the effectiveness of YMHFA implementation within education and youth settings serving diverse communities in London. Survey data and case studies will be shared within the larger evaluation due out in Autumn 2023.

Conversation starter kits for children & young people, parents and carers.

Thrive LDN and Good Thinking have produced two new guides to help Londoners to look out for other people who may be struggling with their mental health. The guides contain a series of practical tips and ideas on starting a conversation, which were developed by Thrive LDN in collaboration with pupils and teachers at St Mary’s RC Primary School, Wimbledon. The guides can be downloaded from Good Thinking’s website.

Suicide Prevention training in schools

In 2019, Thrive LDN commissioned PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide to deliver a series of suicide awareness and prevention training sessions aimed at equipping schools and young people to become suicide safer. This training aims to enable schools to spot and address warning signs that a young person might be thinking of suicide. As a result of this training, over 1,140 people across all London boroughs were trained. 

Supporting the whole school approach

Thrive LDN partnered with the Department for Education (DfE), Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) London and the Greater London Authority (GLA) to promote the benefits of taking a whole school or college approach to mental wellbeing.

Working health and education partners we produced two one-hour webinars for primary schools and secondary schools on the benefits of taking a whole school or college approach to mental wellbeing. You will hear from school teaching staff who will share their experience and examples of good mental health practice.

Act on podcast

In early 2020, we worked with an amazing group of young Londoners to develop, record and launch a podcast series called Act On.

The Act On podcast focuses on issues facing young Londoners’ lives, such as inequality, the challenges of social media and the positive impact of participating in live music and cultural activities. The topics and ideas came as a result of our 2019 World Mental Health Day Festival and the young Londoners who made it happen.

The series opens up conversations on breaking down barriers, building resilience and the importance of having a sense of community. The first 6 episodes of the Act On podcast series were recorded in collaboration with Up For Arts and BBC Radio 1’s Katie Thistleton.

Thriving through Culture

Working in partnership with the GLA and Baring Foundation, Thriving through Culture, a mental health programme for children and young people was delivered from 2021 – 2024. The aims of the programme were to:

• raise awareness of the impact of the arts on children and young people’s mental health
• raise awareness of groups providing support for children and young people
• understand London’s culture and mental health programmes and share these with our stakeholders (for example schools, link workers, youth services and many others)
• create a resource to support children and young people experiencing mental health issues.

The programme was supported by an Advisory Group to help steer the work and provide constructive feedback. The group included members with a combination of professional and lived experience of mental health needs in this area plus representatives from the GLA.

In early 2025, an evaluation of the Thriving through Culture programme was published.

Suicide Prevention training for higher and further education

Thrive LDN commissioned PAPYRUS – a national charity dedicated to the prevention of young suicide. The project launched in 2022/23 and aimed to “upskill and equip staff and institutions with the knowledge and skills to better understand suicide, suicide prevention and develop appropriate safeguarding procedures for vulnerable students”.  Through this training we were able to support 350 staff from over 80 higher and further education institutions across London. The training has equipped staff to respond to students thinking about suicide and to help keep them safe. 

Behind the books, 2023

In partnership with Mental Health Foundation, we have worked with students to develop a university campaign to help students talk about their mental health. This campaign will be launched in September 2023 and aims to provide helpful tips on coping and to help normalise the ups and downs of university life.

We have supported and developed activities and content for several awareness days and weeks that take place over the year. Below we have listed a number of events that we regularly support. Please follow the link to our campaigns pages to find out more.

Children’s Mental Health Week (February)

Launched in 2015, Children’s Mental Health Week is an event led by children’s mental health charity Place2Be in February. This event aims to highlight the importance of looking after our emotional wellbeing from an early age.

2023

2022

Mental Health Awareness Week (May)

This is an annual event hosted by the Mental Health Foundation – a UK charity which aims to find and address sources of mental health problems so that people and communities can thrive. Over the past several years we have created resources and activities to celebrate this events, see below:

2023

2022

2021

2020

Creativity And Wellbeing Week (May)

This is an annual event, launched in 2012, hosted by London Arts in Health Forum, Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance and Arts & Health South West. The national festival celebrates the power of creativity and culture to improve our health and wellbeing. We have been supporting this event since 2019, following the links below to learn more:

2023

2021

2020

2019

World Suicide Prevention Day (10^th September)

This day is observed on 10 September each year where organisations gather together to promote worldwide action to prevent suicides.

World Mental Health Day (10^th October)

The overall objective for this event is to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilise efforts to support mental health. Below we have included further details and links to our activities below:

World Mental Health Day 2022 – Access All Areas

In October 2022, more than 200 young people attend the Access All Areas young-Londoner led festival to mark World Mental Health Day. The festival was delivered in partnership with Living Proof, a youth consultancy, who developed a youth board to curate the festival.

The festival offered a platform for young Londoners to discuss challenges affecting their mental health and wellbeing in the context of access to services and information and provided a space for young people to have a dialogue with key decision makers in health and care. Members of the festival’s youth board were also interviewed by BBC London on the day of the festival which featured on news bulletins both on radio and television.

World Mental Health Day 2021 – Never Alone LDN

For the fourth consecutive year, Thrive LDN and the Mayor of London’s Peer Outreach Team hosted a series of young Londoner-led events to mark World Mental Health Day. Never Alone LDN, took a look at how young Londoners can come together to overcome the challenges we face, and reflecting on the experiences of young Londoners over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

World Mental Health Day 2020

Thrive LDN and the Peer Outreach Team put together a virtual festival of performances, panel discussions and workshops where they discussed with other young people the challenges faced during COVID-19 and explore shared experiences of inequality and issues raised through the Black Lives Matter movement.

World Mental Health Day Festival 2019

Thrive LDN worked in partnership with the Mayor of London’s Peer Outreach Team to takeover City Hall for an all-day young Londoner-led festival to mark World Mental Health Day (WMHD) 2019. The festival focused on day-to-day challenges young people in London face, offering a platform for young people to open up conversations on breaking down barriers, building resilience and the importance of having a sense of community.