Good for Girls

Providing young women access to mental health and wellbeing support

The Good for Girls programme supports young women to access relevant, holistic early intervention mental health support in trusted community spaces. This includes support and guidance from trained youth professionals, and opportunities to develop relationships, skills and tools to maintain positive mental health. Young women get support earlier, meaning fewer require referral to specialist services.

Good for Girls is helping youth clubs become mental health hubs and extend the support for young women outside of school, with trained youth professionals who can create safe spaces where young women feel able to talk about their mental health and learn tools to manage their wellbeing.

Young Women on Good For Girls:
We will work with 900 young women from London over 2 years, with 30 of our member youth and community organisations supporting 15 young women each year. The programme is focused on supporting Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic young women aged 10-14, whilst upskilling a cohort of 30+ youth workers to become Wellbeing Leads and embed positive mental health practices into their delivery. Over this time young women will take part in weekly activities in their youth organisation to promote positive mental health and challenge stigma. They will:

• access activities that promote wellbeing through arts and sports activities
• discuss emotional wellbeing and issues they care about through Talking Circles
• take leadership to promote wellbeing in their communities
• some will design and deliver a social action project over the summer
• some will attend a residential to become ‘Wellbeing Ambassadors’ for their organisation

Youth Worker Training Programme:
We have partnered with Haptivate, Teen Yoga Foundation and Young Minds to lead on the youth worker training. This includes topics such as Stress Management, Relaxation Techniques and Accessing Resources and Support, as well as training on ‘Talking Circles’: a technique that will be used throughout the programme and will help youth workers create safe spaces for young women to talk about mental health. There is also the opportunity to consult with Young Minds for additional, bespoke and tailored training.

How does it work?

Asset-based approach: In this model, community youth organisations will play to their strengths, developing young people’s social and emotional skills and supporting them to better understand mental health and well-being through positive activities in arts and/or sports.

I’m a London Youth member – how can I get involved?

Good for Girls is currently closed for applications. Overall, the 60 London Youth members on programme over the past 2 years have engaged a total of  600 young people in cohort 1 and 620 young people in cohort 2. The Programme Evaluation Reports were produced by our external evaluators Shephard and Moyes Ltd. and can be accessed by clicking the links below.