Dumfries and Galloway Council covers over 3,900 square miles, with a population of 148,800, which is predicted to decline. The population is dispersed across a rural area, with a coastline that extends from Loch Ryan to the Cumbrian coast. It is the third largest council by area in Scotland.

The Youth Information in Schools Project (also known as low-level mental health support in schools) is a youth work early intervention initiative focused on providing support to young people through secondary schools. This support is delivered through 1-2-1 support and group work programmes across Dumfries and Galloway’s 16 secondary schools.

The Youth Information in Schools Project was initially piloted for a two-year period from 2018 to 2020 before being expanded in August 2020 to cover all secondary schools. The project is funded by the Scottish Government and has been developed jointly as a partnership between the council’s Youth Work Service and Educational Psychology.

A strategic group of managers oversee the project on a six-weekly basis. The group is responsible for planning, delivering and evaluating the project. It reports back to the council’s Children's Services Mental Health Strategy Group.

The improvement issue

This project is committed to deliver flexible, responsive, early intervention and low-level mental health support for young people in Dumfries and Galloway using youth workers who have been trained to diploma level in counselling.

The key local priorities identified with headteachers during the development stage were:

• early intervention and prevention;
• Social and emotional well-being;
• promoting healthy lifestyles;
• engaging beyond the school;
• partnership working; and
• promoting a high-quality learning experience

The young people who this is targeted at may be those who:

• there are concerns for about their well-being, including mental and emotional health
• are considered vulnerable (using professional judgement)
• are at risk of offending
• are struggling with a loss/bereavement or significant change
• are struggling with low self-esteem or confidence.

This work is targeted at closing the poverty-related attainment gap and supporting young people's emotional, behavioural and mental health. It offers a confidential, non-judgemental, and holistic approach to support young people’s social and emotional wellbeing.

The project promotes early detection and intervention strategies that can help improve young people’s resilience and ability to succeed in school and in life. The expected outcome is to prevent mental health problems developing in the first place and to equip young people with coping strategies.

The longer-term goal is to reduce the number of young people needing mental health support from NHS or other more formal mental health services.

What the Dumfries and Galloway did

The Youth Information in Schools Project in Dumfries and Galloway has a unique approach to providing mental health support to young people using a youth work approach. It was designed in collaboration with young people and professionals. The project aims to address the gap between the delivery of universal provisions, which are available to all, and more clinical interventions. For example, young people’s engagement with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

In line with Scottish Government requirements, all Youth Information Workers delivering on the project are qualified with the necessary skills and training to work with children and young people. They have all gained a Diploma in counselling training course through COSCA (the professional body for counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland) and are currently completing a Counselling and Groupwork – A Cognitive Behavioural Approach diploma. The staff have also completed Professional Development Award training in youth work, which is the council’s advanced course for staff working with young people.

As part of the agreed professional standards and current best practice, staff are offered continual professional development and learning opportunities, including child protection policies. This training enhances and complements the youth work approach and better equips the youth workers to deliver a more effective response to ensure the best possible outcomes for young people.

What the sustained impact has been

The project has robust pre- and post-evaluation methods in place to measure the effectiveness and impact of the project in relation to young people’s emotional, behavioural and psychological wellbeing. These include:

• Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) – A brief behavioural screening questionnaire that asks 25 attributes, some positive and others negative. This is to assess the emotional and behavioural issues that some young people may be experiencing.
• Stirling Children’s Wellbeing Scale (SCWBS) – consists of 12 items measuring emotional and psychological wellbeing and 3 items forming a social desirability sub-scale overall.
• YLS National Wellbeing Scale – 15 questions relating to wellbeing, covering indicators relating to personal, family, school, and community contexts. Young people provide a score that they feel represents their feelings for each question (1 = low; 5 = high). This helps professionals to create a baseline to measure progress and change.
• Target sheet – young people set goals that they want to achieve (which may be to do with any aspect of their lives) using a scale of 0 to 10. This is reviewed weekly to measure progress and to help them stay on track throughout their sessions.

Detailed reports are produced on an annual basis that reflect the interventions delivered, the reach of the project and the impact of engagement. There have been 5 reports published to date. This has enabled the partnership to track the longer-term trends relevant to the use, access and impact of low-level mental health support through schools.

In 2022, Youth Link Scotland (Scotland's national agency for youth work), Northern Star and the University of St Andrews were commissioned to conduct an external, independent evaluation of the impact of Dumfries and Galloway Council's Youth Work Service providing the low-level Mental Health Support Project in schools across the region.

The aim of the evaluation was to answer two key questions:

• What impact is the Low-Level Mental Health in Schools Project having on young people?
• How was that impact achieved?

This independent research shows the significant positive impact on the wellbeing of the young people who participate in the projects.