6

Written evidence from Miss Grace Ward (CYM0100)

Health and Social Care Select Committee and Education Select Committee Inquiry into Children and Young People’s Mental Health

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this call to evidence. My name is Grace Ward, and I am writing this response as a young person, expert by experience, and Trainee Children and Young Person’s Wellbeing Practitioner. I have a range of experience and knowledge within the mental health system, allowing me to provide critical insights into best practice and challenges when considering Early Support Hubs and Young Futures Hubs.[1]

Throughout this response, I will relate different aspects of the call to evidence to my own experiences, in the hope that this will illuminate the points that I make.

I first accessed mental health support a decade ago, aged 12, from a community-based Early Support Hub in Liverpool. Throughout my ten-year journey, I have accessed low-level interventions as well as counselling multiple times. The Early Support Hub allowed me to return as much as I felt I needed to, and opened doors to opportunities I didn’t know existed. My practitioner recognized I wanted to stay within the service and signposted me to the Young Ambassador’s group. It was in this space that I met a key trusted adult in my life, participated in a social space, and discovered my passion for making change.

Within this short introduction, there are a few key points to pull out already in regard to how mental health support can be offered to children and young people within the community:

-          The open-door nature of the Early Support Hub meant that the organization was accessible to me through self-referral. Although I had to face waiting lists, I recognized even then that this was not the fault of the organization but the wider system in which they were and are still working in.

-          Awareness of what service provision is available is crucial for both staff and young people. If the practitioner I was seeing did not know about the Young Ambassadors group, I doubt I would have been able to access this space.

-          Beyond the responsibility of staff to know what service provision available, community-based Early Support Hubs need the resources to promote what they have on offer to get young people through the door and avoid misperceptions. Young people often face the issue of being referred into an Early Support Hub by a GP, who has provided them unclear or incorrect information about what the organization can offer, including diagnoses and access to psychologists. This can lead to young people being passed from service to service trying to find the right support, all the while their problem may be getting worse.

-          Having a range of support under one roof is a staple of Early Support Hubs. Beyond low-intensity interventions or therapy, an Early Support Hub’s offer might include LGBTQ+ support, support for parents, support for domestic abuse victims, support for those involved with the criminal justice system, as well as group interventions. What provision an Early Support Hub has on offer will differ from hub to hub to reflect the local community and the fact that young people do not experience mental health difficulties in a vacuum.

-          Rooted within the ethos of Early Support Hubs is a commitment to participation from service users to help shape the organization and give young people a voice locally and nationally.[2]

Employment at an Early Support Hub:

Following my time as a Young Ambassador, the Early Support Hub I had once accessed for support employed me as a Peer Researcher and Peer Mentor. I like to think that this demonstrates what is possible when Early Support Hubs are given the resources they need to work well in the community. I am an example of what a young person can achieve when given the right support at the right time.

In the last four years as an employee at an Early Support Hub, I have had the privilege of conducting a research project on youth violence in Merseyside, attend the Labour Party and Conservative Party Conferences to take part in panel discussions, and have been published in The Lancet.[3]

I am trusted as a young person and employee within the organisation, given the tools and resources I need to succeed. More recently, I co-designed and delivered a weekly, online group intervention to support young people on the waiting list for our services, with a focus on how they can look after themselves. While there is not a strong evidence base for online interventions such as this, there is opportunity to explore local and lived experienced designed online interventions to support their development and growth. It is imperative that young people have a choice in how they receive support. Especially in a digital age, we need to ensure young people are being offered both online and in-person options to help fit their needs.

Opportunities created through rights-based participation in an Early Support Hub:

Without the Early Support Hub’s commitment to rights-based participation,[4] I would not be where I am today. I hope it is clear so far that I am on the journey I’m on now because I accessed an Early Support Hub that gave me options, flexibility, and supported not only my personal growth, but my professional growth. Any work done around Early Support Hubs cannot be done without a focus on how these hubs can be supported to embed participation within their services. Many organisations are aware of participation and the Lundy Model of participation, wishing they could encourage young people to help shape the service and its direction, but can’t do this due to the lack of funding provided for this specific area of work.

Participation is not a nice to have. Any good practitioner should be embedding participation within their day-to-day work, ensuring their sessions with young people are collaborative and led by them. This is known as individual participation. Beyond this, we would hope to see an organisation for young people co-designed, co-led, and co-delivered by young people themselves. This is known as public participation, the side that often requires more time, money, and resources, and the side I have been most heavily involved with. The benefits of public participation within an Early Support Hub are numerous:

-          The Early Support Hub will represent the young people it serves by having young people on staff interview panels, by employing young people as staff members, or by engaging with young people as volunteers.

-          Young people will be given opportunities to develop their skills, learn more about the sector and the system, see examples of best practice from staff members, and have something they can put on their CV.

-          It can promote democracy and rights, helping to empower young people on their mental health journey beyond 1-1 sessions with a practitioner. Participation gives a space for storytelling and community building, helping to support a young person’s wellbeing by giving them a sense of purpose.[5]

More so than these benefits, young people have the right to have their voices heard as ascribed by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.[6] Often I question whether this is being upheld by those in power when I look at the current mental health system for young people. Does it reflect what young people want? And are the decisions being made in the best interests of young people themselves?

Current context for Early Support Hubs:

In the last year, Early Support Hubs have had to respond to the potential end of the Shared Outcomes Fund. With this funding only offered with a year’s timeframe, this is a key indicator of the pressures early support hubs face. Without sustainable, long-term funding, Early Support Hubs cannot guarantee they will always be available to young people in their community when embedded, trusted organisations are important to young people. Short-term funding is also to the detriment of staff, who sometimes lack the security of whether they have a future in the role. This will not encourage the development of a mental health workforce, especially in the area of early intervention and prevention.

Although the Shared Outcomes Fund was extended for another year In February 2026,[7] I am concerned as a young person and staff member of an Early Support Hub that we will face the same issue of being unsure what funding options are available in February 2027.

Furthermore, I have been waiting for the opportunity to share my reflections and experiences with the Government for a long time. I have been to Parliament, conferences and events to tell my story and have not seen any difference come of this. While I will continue in this manner, I would like to highlight the emotional toll of having to repeat my story over and over to no avail. I am just one person trying to advocate for change, and there will be many like me across the country who feel this sense of exclusion too. We should not feel constantly under pressure to share our stories because they weren’t listened to and adequately responded to in the first instance.

In considering next steps for Early Support Hubs and the mental health system, I think the engagement of those with lived experience should be reviewed. Rather than single interactions, there should be a continuous dialogue between those with lived experience and policymakers to shape the future of Early Support Hubs. If people who understand the system are offering their support, it would be a waste not to work in collaboration with them.

Recommendations and conclusions:

I recognise that Early Support Hubs aren’t going to solve every issue young people face. However, they are a part of the mental health system that is overlooked, needing more recognition and backing to truly flourish and do what they do best: offer holistic, open access mental health and wellbeing support for young people, signpost and connect with other services, give young people a space to be young people, as well as be a space of innovation and development.

In sum, looking at my experience of accessing an Early Support Hub and working within the mental health system, my recommendations include:

-          Let the local be local. While it may seem necessary to create a structure or a framework by which early support hubs should work, it is best for Early Support Hubs to offer service provision relevant to their local community. A set of principles for Early Support Hubs to loosely follow is useful guidance and already exists through the YIACS/Youth Access Model.[8] The Committee should ask the Government if they are aware of the Youth Access Model and if they are willing to engage with it as a model of best practice.

-          Don’t take for granted what you already have. Invest in Early Support Hubs beyond short-term funding and avoid splitting resources to fund new, unestablished initiatives. Currently, there does not seem to be a plan on how Young Futures Hubs will align with Early Support Hubs. If sustainable funding for Early Support Hubs will not be available (which should be an imperative for mental health support, as I’ve outlined), then mental health support should be offered by Young Futures Hubs. However, Young Futures Hubs could sit alongside Early Support Hubs when we consider mental health and wellbeing holistically. If Early Support Hubs are invested in to deliver mental health and wellbeing support, Young Futures Hubs could compliment this through a wider offer of wellbeing support ranging from youth justice support, education support, and employment support. Young Futures Hubs do not need to offer a duplicate of what Early Support Hubs currently offer; Early Support Hubs and Young Futures Hubs need to be in each locality so there is not a postcode lottery when trying to access mental health support and broader wellbeing support.

-          Consider the importance of online interventions, despite the evidence base being limited. Online interventions can help to add more access points to an Early Support Hubs. Early Support Hubs need support to prove the efficacy of these interventions but lack the resources and time to do so. Funding to enable this and build the evidence base would help to advance this further. The Committee should ask the Government what its plans are to explore and develop online mental health interventions as a part of a community mental health offer and how they will support the development of those interventions that already exist.

-          Engage with those who have lived experience of accessing mental health support within the community to shape the future of Early Support Hubs and Young Futures Hubs. Only those with experience of what works and what doesn’t will enable you to create a truly effective service. Meanwhile, participation can help to empower young people and can support their mental health if conducted ethically. The Committee should ask the Government how they plan to carry out meaningful work with lived experience advocates beyond simple consultation, and possibly through co-design and co-delivery of services.

-          Early Support Hubs need more support, resources, and time to signpost to young people in their community, while other organisations (including GPs) need to be aware of an Early Support Hub’s service offer to achieve effective joined up working. Early support and prevention can only be successful if there is an awareness that this support is available and accessible when a young person first experiences difficulties with their mental health. A national Government drive behind Early Support Hubs would help to raise their profile and increase awareness of what they offer, which is known to increase engagement with mental health support.[9]

-          Early Support Hubs should continue to be open access with no thresholds to access. It is crucial that young people can walk through the door of an Early Support Hub as and when they feel they need the support. The Committee should ask the Government how they will support Early Support Hubs to do so and if they recognise the benefits of open access mental health support for young people.

-          Early Support Hubs and Young Futures Hubs should offer support up to the age of 25, regardless of need. Transitional stages in a young person’s life can often mean they require some support, but the transition into adult services from children’s services can be a difficult one. The Government should work to gather evidence to understand how Early Support Hubs currently support young people up to the age of 25 with their mental health and wellbeing to assess effectiveness compared to other spaces where young people might look to access mental health support from when they turn 18.[10]

-          The Committee should ask the Government if they will recognise the ever-growing evidence base for the effectiveness of Early Support Hubs and show commitment to community based mental health support through long-term sustainable funding for Early Support Hubs.

Thank you again for this opportunity. Please see my references throughout which provide further context and insights.

June 2026