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Mental Health Support for every child in Derby City and Derbyshire

Published on: June 25, 2024

Changing Lives has grown!

Every child and young person in Derby and Derbyshire now has access to free and confidential prevention and early intervention emotional wellbeing and mental health support from Compass Changing Lives.

This follows the expansion of Compass Changing Lives to include the Early Intervention and Targeted Support Service, formerly known as Build Sound Minds, at the beginning of June.

Compass Changing Lives will now be made up of two constituent services: the Mental Health Support Teams who will continue to work with schools across Derbyshire using the Whole School Approach Model; and our Early Intervention and Targeted Support Service who will primarily work with communities and GPs in Derbyshire, and link with schools for training.

For students at schools that have already began working with Changing Lives, nothing will change. But for students who haven’t, they will now have access to the wealth of resources and support that Changing Lives offers.

Changing Lives provides support for children and young people with mild to moderate emotional health and wellbeing needs, in groups and one to one. Support is also available to parents and carers around improving their knowledge and understanding of how best to support and improve their child’s mental health and wellbeing.

This will be the first time that every child in Derbyshire will have access to mental health support at a comparative level of care and through “one front door”.

Chantelle Ross, Service Manager at Compass Changing Lives, had the following to say:

“Compass Changing Lives are delighted to bring together two distinct services to work collaboratively to provide a comparable offer across the County. With a one front door approach, referring for Early Intervention services across the County has been streamlined for ease of access for children, young people and families. As an experienced provider of MHST and Early Intervention and Targeted Support Provision, we are excited to see the service progress over the coming months.”

Kirstie Brannigan, Operations Manager who joined Compass Changing Lives as part of the Early Intervention and Targeted Support Service, had this to add:

“Its exciting times for Derby and Derbyshire in terms of Early Intervention Mental Health Support. Bringing everything under one provider again will make referrals processes more seamless for Children, young people and families. We look forward to bringing new and exciting additions to our offer in the coming months.”

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