Helping Young People To Shine
and see a brighter future!
Every young person has great value and potential.
SHINE YOUTH is a charity in Solihull, West Midlands which is committed to supporting young people aged 11 - 18 years to have good mental health, positive self-esteem and identity, and to live lives filled with hope and purpose.
Through high quality 1:1 pastoral mentoring and counselling; transition support; innovative group courses, wellbeing workshops, a peer mentoring scheme and relational, mental-health-skilled youth work at our weekly Youth Wellbeing Cafes, our transformative work increases young people’s mental and emotional wellbeing so that they can flourish and shine in their family, friendships, education, work life and community.
We reduce young people’s emotional distress, restore hope and assist them to build their resilience to engage with Education and achieve their potential through the following provision:
We also seek to keep young people at the centre of all we do through our YOUTH VOICE groups.
These groups engage young people and amplify their voices to Highlight, Inform and Shape the mental health and wellbeing services on offer to them.
MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING
In 2023 one in five young people aged 5 - 16 years were identified to have a probable mental health condition and urgent referrals to Children & Young People’s Mental Health Services were 67% higher than 2022 (NHS England & NHS Providers, Nov 2023).
The Covid-19 pandemic particularly affected young people’s mental health and saw a huge increase in the number referred (NHS Digital, June 2022). But even before this increase, 3 in 4 young people did not get access to services until they reached crisis point (Mental Health Foundation, 2019).
Our work is a vital part of prevention, early intervention and targeted support while people wait for NHS support and to enable them to access Education.
SHINE YOUTH is working upstream, picking young people up and equipping and empowering them to manage their thoughts and feelings positively to avoid long-term difficulty and crisis. We help them to ‘wait well’ so that difficulties do not escalate.
Our work is often part of the provision to prevent school exclusion and to re-engage those who are persistently absent from school, as this is linked to lower attainment and life chances. We support young people who are not attending school for a variety of reasons including neurodivergence and Emotionally Based School Non Attendance (EBSNA).
GRIEF & LOSS (BEREAVEMENT AND FAMILY SEPARATION)
Half of all under 16’s in the UK experience family breakdown and 92% experience bereavement (Centre for Social Justice; Child Bereavement UK).
Both are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): stressful and sometimes traumatic experiences which can have very negative effects on health, wellbeing, education and life chances throughout people’s lives.
We listen to young people struggling to cope with loss and bereavement and assist them to process their grief.
“I can think of several students whom I don’t think would have sat their GCSEs without the difference their weekly mentoring sessions have made, and three who have avoided permanent exclusion from school”
(Assistant Headteacher)
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