The Tayside Health & Wellbeing Priority Group (Priority Group 3) has the responsibility, through the Tayside Plan for Children, Young People and Families 2017 – 2020, to develop and implement a Mental Health strategy for Tayside’s children and young people. Work to progress this strategy has been ongoing for over 12 months, driven by a multi-agency Task & Finish Group led by Tracey Stewart, Education Officer, Dundee City Council.
A significant aspect of the Task & Finish Group’s activity was the delivery of a Tayside wide conference related to Emotional Health & Wellbeing of children and young people. The conference was held on 29 August 2019 at Abertay University in Dundee and was aimed at the widest possible audience of partners working with children and families across Tayside.
The conference aims were to showcase and share the excellent work going on across services to support mental health and emotional wellbeing; provide young people with a platform to share their views, experiences and asks; enable consultation with a wide-ranging audience on the development and content of Tayside’s first mental health strategy for children and young people; and launch Tayside’s Emotional Health & Wellbeing toolkit for practitioners.
Feedback from the 250 people who attended the conference was very positive. Analysis of all the comments is currently in progress, but the interactive input from audience members on the day was extremely valuable feedback for the development of the strategy as were the voices and contributions of the young people attending together with the workshop evaluations.
The 29 August event was the first multi-agency conference in Tayside to focus on improving the emotional and mental health of our children and young people. This positive focus on this key aspect of health reflects the ambition of all partner agencies across Tayside to develop a multi-agency, regional strategy for mental health, which will also be understood to be a first of its kind in Scotland.
More details are available from the Tayside’s Emotional Health & Wellbeing toolkit news post.
You can also download the toolkit.
