Mental health is everybody’s business but often it can be difficult to know what support and services are available for children, young people, and their families. Using the Thrive Framework, Making Mental Health Everybody’s Business aims to help practitioners navigate the system, identify what resources are available and how to access them in line with the appropriate level of need.
Making Mental Health Everybody’s Business.pdf
Thrive framework
Durham County Council has adopted the THRIVE framework to organise support for children, young people, and their families.
THRIVE is person centred, and needs led approach to delivering mental health services for children, young people, and their families. The approach was developed by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families.
Adopting the THRIVE Framework means that Durham County Council Children and Young People’s Services and wider partners are working together to better support mental health and wellbeing for children, young people, and families.
The first aim is to talk about mental health and wellbeing and support a common language that everyone understands.
The THRIVE Framework thinks about the mental health and wellbeing needs of children, young people, and families through five different levels:
- Getting Advice and Signposting
- Getting Help
- Getting More Help
- Getting Risk Support
We want to promote positive mental health and wellbeing and prevent any difficulties from getting worse. We involve children and families in decisions about their care and support. This is central to the THRIVE approach.
Further information on the THRIVE framework, including a short animation, can be found on the I-Thrive website.
Self-Harm
Self-harm involves a child or young person deliberately hurting their own body. This is usually a way for them to show that they are in distress. Self-harm can take many forms such as scratching, cutting, burning, biting, overdose and choking.
The Children and Young People Self-Harm Pathway is for all practitioners working with children and families, from universal services such as sports clubs, youth clubs, schools and health service to targeted and specialist services such as Family Help, Children’s Social Care and crisis services.
The pathway outlines how to best support children and young people who are self-harming, from prevention to crisis and includes links to helpful services and resources.
Durham’s Self-Harm Guidance for School Based Staff provides more information for schools when children and young people are self-harming or expressing thoughts of suicide.
Further sources of information
- Family Hubs for advice and practical support across all aspects of family life.
- County Durham Families Information Service is a signposting service for families who live in County Durham.
- Locate is an online directory helping residents in County Durham to connect with local services in their community.
- Local Offer – support for children and young people (from birth to 25 years) with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
- Critical Incident Guidance – A guide for schools and educational settings in Durham.pdf aims to outline the support offer available through the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Partnership for schools and education settings to help them when they are affected by a sudden loss or a critical incident.
- You can download and print Mental health and emotional support for adults in County Durham.pdf as a great starting point to help you access support for adults in County Durham
- You can also download and print CYP MH Rainbow Resource December 23.pdf as a great starting point to help you access support for Children and Young People in County Durham.
- Supporting Young People with Mental Health Concerns – a young person and his mum share their experiences of what did and didn’t work for them. This resource is available on the DSCP Elearning courses on page 3