A new policy briefing published today by the Future Minds Campaign and Fund the Hubs calls for an open access wellbeing offer in Young Futures Hubs to support children and young people with mental health problems. It argues these interventions should be delivered in a community setting, with NHS clinical support, backed by closer alignment across government to ensure that Young Futures Hubs are embedded within existing health planning and commissioning frameworks.

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The policy briefing comes as eight early adopter local authorities begin to develop their implementation plans for their Young Futures Hubs, with three core aims: to improve young people’s mental health, reduce their involvement or risk of involvement in violence and crime, and increase access to opportunities. 

“Labour’s new Young Futures hubs will provide open access mental health services for children and young people in every community.” [Labour Manifesto, 2024]

The Government made a clear commitment in its manifesto to improve the mental health of young people through specialist support and earlier intervention. This was a welcome pledge, with one in five young people now experiencing a common mental health problem and less than a third getting NHS mental health help in time.

The NHS 10 Year Plan set out a series of shifts to transform the NHS: from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. Crucially, the plan commits to meeting children’s mental health needs and recognises Young Futures Hubs as a mechanism to deliver open access, drop-in mental health support to children and young people in local communities.

Future Minds Campaign and Fund the Hubs have come together to set out how Young Futures Hubs can specifically deliver the mental health aim. 

The briefing sets out how the Department for Health and Social Care should ensure that Hubs are embedded withing existing planning and commissioning frameworks, such as local Integrated Care Systems, and work closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to establish a clear role for Integrated Care Boards and frontline mental health services within the early adopter Hubs guidance.

Within the Hubs themselves, the briefing calls for:

• An open access wellbeing offer, as well as mental health support
• NHS support and clinical oversight
• Interventions in a non-clinical, community setting
• Embedded working relationships with specialist and youth services

The briefing also sets out how a mental health and wellbeing offer in Hubs will need to specifically target and address the needs of marginalised and at-risk children and young people, so as not to exacerbate existing inequalities in health outcomes.

The Future Minds Campaign brings together four of the UK’s leading children and young people’s and mental health organisations – Centre for Mental Health, the Centre for Young Lives, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition and YoungMinds, with the support of the Prudence Trust – to join forces in calling on the Government to deliver urgent reform and investment of children’s mental health support.  

The Fund the Hubs campaign calls for a national network of early support hubs across the country, which would provide early support for young people’s mental health when their problems first start to emerge. The campaign is led by Black Thrive Global, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, Centre for Mental Health, Mind, The Children’s Society, YoungMinds and Youth Access.

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