The Blues Programme
Action for Children and Royal Mail recognised the urgent need to help solve the growing issue of depression and mental health conditions in young people.
The Blues Programme is a preventative, group-work programme delivered in schools by experienced youth workers. It supports young people aged 13-19 years, who demonstrate depressive symptoms, or who are at risk of the onset of major depression or other mental health issues.
The Blues Programme is a preventative, group-work programme delivered in schools by experienced youth workers. It supports young people aged 13-19 years, who demonstrate depressive symptoms, or who are at risk of the onset of major depression or other mental health issues.
The Blues Programme
Action for Children and Royal Mail recognised the urgent need to help solve the growing issue of depression and mental health conditions in young people.
The Blues Programme is a preventative, group-work programme delivered in schools by experienced youth workers. It supports young people aged 13-19 years, who demonstrate depressive symptoms, or who are at risk of the onset of major depression or other mental health issues.
The Blues Programme is a preventative, group-work programme delivered in schools by experienced youth workers. It supports young people aged 13-19 years, who demonstrate depressive symptoms, or who are at risk of the onset of major depression or other mental health issues.
The Blues Programme is a successful, evidence-based programme, with a core purpose of tackling depression and mental health symptoms at the preventative stage. It has been trialled successfully in the U.S.A. and Royal Mail’s support will enable Action for Children to launch it across the UK.
The programme works intensively with small groups of eight young people over a 6-week period. It uses cognitive behavioural therapy techniques and teaches young people ways to cope with current and future challenges they will face.
We assessed the improvements in a number of outcomes such as those outlined below to measure the impact of the programme:
- The reduction in depressive symptoms
- The reduction in illegal substance misuse
- Improvement in relationships
- Improvement in confidence
- Improvement in self-esteem
- Improvement in school attendance
- Improvement in attitude to learning and attainment