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Your Resilience programme expands to address parents’ mental health concerns

Change Mental Health’s partnership with CAMHS Tayside delivers support for parents and carers of young people, addressing a gap in mental health education.
Your Resilience programme expands to address parents’ mental health concerns with CAMHS Tayside

In collaboration with CAMHS Tayside, Change Mental Health has developed Your Resilience for Parents and Carers, a programme designed to help parents and carers of young people aged 13–18.  

Addressing the lack of support available for families tackling mental health challenges,  Your Resilience focuses on building a stronger understanding of resilience and providing practical tools to strengthen the wellbeing of parents, carers and young people.  

Preliminary findings from Planet Youth Highland’s recent survey of over 500 parents and carers indicate that mental health, stress and anxiety were the topics parents and carers are the most concerned about regarding the health and wellbeing of their children. It shows a real need for programmes that provide parents and carers with the tools to support their children with these subjects.  

Plant Youth Highland research

The Suffering in Silence research from Children in Scotland shows that there is a significant gap in support for parents and carers looking to help young people with their mental health. With parental engagement shown to improve outcomes for young people, the Your Resilience for Parents and Carers programme ensures parents are equipped to match the Scottish curriculum’s focus on mindfulness and mental health awareness. 

programme highlights  

The four-session programme, adapted from Change Mental Health’s Young People’s Programmes Your Resilience workshop for young people and youth workers, includes interactive workshops focusing on:  

Participants also engage in activities and discussions based on relatable scenarios, giving them practical strategies to support their children or young people they are caring for. 

impact of the pilot programme 

The pilot, run from October to December 2024, involved 90 parents and carers across two online cohorts. The results showed the programme’s effectiveness in boosting confidence and understanding: 

  • 100% of participants felt more confident in understanding resilience. 
  • Confidence in personal resilience increased from baseline levels to 89%. 
  • 88% of parents felt confident supporting their child’s wellbeing after the sessions, compared to 46% at the start. 
  • Confidence in discussing mental health with their children rose from 58% to 93%. 

One parent of a 14-year-old reflected: 

“I feel well informed about the meaning of resilience and the various tools to support my teens in developing resilience. Having done this course and with the knowledge gained I feel much more confident and more equipped to support my teenage daughter.” 

“By focusing both on parents’ own resilience and practical strategies for growing resilience in young people, the programme meets a critical need, enabling parents and carers to navigate the challenges of young people’s mental health with confidence.  

“The positive feedback from participants highlights the importance of programmes like these and the impact they can have on the wellbeing of families as a whole.” 

Hannah Dibnah, Service Manager, Young People’s Programmes

next steps 

Following the success of the pilot, Change Mental Health plans to expand the programme across Scotland, working with schools, CAMHS teams and community groups. Future developments include: 

  • Adding resources on suicide awareness and prevention, aligning with Scotland’s 2022–2032 Suicide Prevention Strategy, of which Change Mental Health partners with Penumbra Mental Health on Outcome 3. 
  • Recruiting more diverse participants, including fathers and carers from underserved communities. 
  • Continuing to refine the content based on participant feedback to meet the evolving needs of families. 

To learn more about the pilot results and future plans forYour Resilience for Parents and Carers’, read the full report.    

download

For more information, contact our Young People’s Programme at youngpeople@changemh.org. 

Change Mental Health extends a thank you to CAMHS Tayside for their collaboration and to the parents and carers who took part in the pilot. 

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