Like most funders, we want to know how effective our grant making is and what we can do to improve. For our Young Women’s Mental Health programme, we wanted to know specifically if our funding is helping to improve young women’s mental health and whether it is increasing their access to high quality, age and gender specific mental health services. We believe taking an age and gender specific approach to young women’s mental health provision better addresses the complex, intersectional needs of young women and want to evaluate whether this is the case.
We invited Centre for Mental Health to evaluate these key questions and they’ve spent the last year working closely with our first set of grantees to build an effective evaluation process, collect data and report back. We are pleased to share the First Year Evaluation Report, which deep dives into how the projects are going, exploring successes, challenges, learnings and next steps. Below we share some key highlights.
Background
Our first cohort is made up of 10 grantees from across Greater Manchester and Northern Ireland that are supporting young women’s mental health in diverse ways – such as 1-2-1 counselling, creative activities and group support. We wanted to create an evaluation process and data collection methods that were relevant to grantees and young women with straightforward data collection processes, as well as effectively assessing the programme outcomes. The First Year Evaluation Report includes testimonials from project leads and young women, builds evidence for the importance of taking an age and gender specific approach and recommendations.
Highlights from the evaluation
In total, 788 young women engaged with the 10 grantee projects across Greater Manchester and Northern Ireland. Of those who took part in the evaluation, the young women have reported clear positive impacts from the various projects, including:
- Increased confidence and self-esteem – young women and the project leads reported a significant increase in young women’s confidence and self-esteem and how these positive changes enabled young women to achieve certain milestones they couldn’t before, such as applying for courses, getting jobs and daily tasks.
- Increased mental health awareness –young women developed a greater understanding of their mental health difficulties and gained the confidence to talk about them and seek support. One young woman from Lighthouse shared how she used this new understanding of mental health to help others:
‘Even my friends… when they struggle, I can give them some of the tips you (the youth worker) used to give me…’
- Development of positive coping strategies – the report noted many cases where young women have learnt positive coping strategies to manage their mental health, such as going for walks, listening to music, meditation and going to support sessions. One young woman from M13 Youth project shared:
When I can feel myself getting bad again and I know ways to help slow it down and even stop it sometimes. I know how to keep my mental health good and if I’m depressed, I know who to turn to and how they can help me.’
- Building a supportive network – young women shared how they built a new network of trusted and supportive people – including professional staff and peers. Developing these relationships has also helped young women learn how to build healthy relationships outside of the programme.
- Increasing young women’s access to age and gender specific mental health services – the report found evidence for seven emerging benefits to taking an age and gender specific approach, such as the importance of having safe and exclusive spaces for young women, building supportive networks and offering more individual support. A future article will share more on these findings.
Overall, initial evidence shows the positive impact these projects are making on the wellbeing and daily lives of young women. Although further data is required to strengthen these findings in the upcoming years of the programme, Centre for Mental Health’s initial reports are promising.
What’s next?
Centre for Mental Health have identified several recommendations, which we are exploring next steps for. Some of these recommendations include exploring how grantees can engage and influence wider decision-makers on young women’s mental health; how Centre for Mental Health can revise their data collection process; and how we can facilitate further training and learning opportunities for grantees in relation to the age and gender specific approach.
Additionally, we want to be advocates for the excellent work being done by our grantees, and wider goals of this programme, so will be considering how best to share this approach with other funders and decision makers. As a funder we are always looking to improve our grant making, as well as embodying our values of being responsive, straightforward, and transparent. As we embark on these next steps, we will continue sharing more milestones and reflections with our community.
If you would like to know more, please read the First Year Evaluation Report or reach out to us to have a chat.
Feature image: Young Women’s Mental Health grantees during their second cohort meet up in Belfast in 2023.