Avenues Youth Club

Our youth hubs are designed to provide mental health support and increase access to services for young people aged 11-25 in Westminster. This initiative is especially focused on reaching those who may not usually engage or areas where support may be limited.

Steering Group Meetings for Collaborative Support

We’ve introduced steering meetings that occur every few months to bring together professionals across local services. By doing so, we can better tailor our services with expert guidance and enhance the outreach to young people in the community.

At a July steering group, we discovered that the Avenues Youth Club were running a mental health week and we agreed to deliver three mental wellbeing workshops and participate in a podcast as part of this event.

Mental Health Week: Workshops and Podcast

1. Social media and Internet Safety – A session with a group of girls, focussing on safe online behaviours.
2. Managing Emotions – Open to all youth club members, this workshop focused on understanding and regulating emotions.
3. Supporting Your Mental Health and That of Others – A session aimed at promoting self-care and mental health awareness for loved ones.

Additionally, we took part in the Avenues radio podcast with the episode covering the topic of cyberbullying. The podcast can be listened to here.

Our team received positive feedback from the youth workers involved, one commented: “The youth workers were really pleased to have experts in the building to provide psychoeducation for young people, helping them open up about mental health topics that they may not have discussed otherwise.”

Insights from the Workshops

Anusha, our ‘Whole Hub Approach Advisor’, reflected on how valuable these sessions were in understanding the concerns of young people today. One workshop focused on managing emotions and involved using an ’emotion wheel’—a tool designed to expand emotional vocabulary (See picture below). Each group was tasked with describing what different emotions meant to them. This naturally led to a discussion about fear and nervousness, revealing how deeply local violence, such as stabbings and other traumatic events, was affecting the young people.

This session highlighted the real impact that events like the tragic Southport primary school incident, national riots, and the ongoing threat of knife crime have on young people’s mental health and their sense of safety.

Anusha shared her thoughts on the week: “It was fascinating to see how the minds of young people work. The workshops provided a rare opportunity to connect with individuals who might not otherwise have access to mental health support. It’s clear that outreach like this helps us better understand the concerns affecting youth in our community.”

Planning for the Future

At a later steering group meeting these sessions were reviewed. The insights gained from these discussions will help us shape future workshops to address the psychological impact of local and national issues. By focusing on these concerns, we aim to support young people more effectively and help them navigate the challenges they face in today’s world.

Initiatives like this facilitate our commitment to provide meaningful mental health support to the young people of the boroughs in which we operate, ensuring they have access to the resources they need to thrive.