Published on: January 13, 2025
Our mission is to provide mental health and emotional wellbeing support to children, young people, families and schools in Derby City and Derbyshire, and 2024 was a massive year for us.
We started the year by expanding to two new areas and opening two new Centres of Excellence. As part of the Wave 10 expansion in January, we launched two new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs). The new teams, South Derbyshire and High Peak MHSTs, provide support to Granville Academy, Glossopdale School, and their feeder schools.
In June, we had our biggest expansion of all, as we added an Early Intervention Targeted Support Service, formerly known as Build Sound Minds. We now offer our services to every child and young person in Derby City and Derbyshire, through “One Front Door”.
In June, we had another big milestone with the introduction of our Wellbeing App. The app gives young people access to a variety of new mental health resources from home, including advice, support, and the option to refer themselves to our service. We’re constantly adding new features to the app, with even more exciting updates coming soon!
This year, we also introduced new Welcome Packs, for children and young people when they are offered support within our service. The packs provide an introduction to important mental health and wellbeing topics and includes helpful activities to support children, young people and their families understand the support on offer with Changing Lives. They were created with input from diverse groups of children and young people across Derby and Derbyshire, and their unique ideas really shine through.
Our practitioners have spent the year helping children and young people with their mental health, directly in groups or one to ones using low intensity CBT methods, but also by supporting parents, carers and families by giving them the tools and knowledge they need to support their children. We have also been working directly with schools, to improve children and young people’s wellbeing in their place of learning, through our whole school approach.
One way our practitioners do this is by visiting schools and attending events, and in 2024 our practitioners took part in a wide range of assemblies, workshops, and events across Derbyshire. These included summer schools, Fresher’s Fairs, teacher network meetings, and events for parents. We made sure to be there to raise awareness about our service, talk about mental health, and share tips on improving children’s wellbeing. Don’t forget our positivitree!
Throughout the year, we’ve participated in big campaigns on subjects that affect young people in Derby and Derbyshire. These have included Mental Health Day, Anti Bullying Week and LGBTQ+ Pride Month, among others. For these we’ve collaborated with schools on events, talked about them online, and even worked together as colleagues to celebrate and observe them. One of the biggest examples of these was #MayWeMoveTogether, our month long celebration of how movement and exercise can benefit mental health and wellbeing.
You might have seen us sharing updates on social media or in our monthly newsletter sent to partners and schools. This year, we refreshed our online presence and have been sharing lots of useful content. We regularly post features (like our 5 Ways to Wellbeing series), helpful tips (like these for returning to school after the holidays), news and updates from our teams, and weekly posts such as Mindful Mondays and Feedback Fridays. See these for yourself by following us on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) and LinkedIn, and signing up to our mailing list here.
We’ve been involved with several important projects throughout the year, to help improve the mental health of the children and young people in Derby and Derbyshire. We’ve taken part in research, like the INTEND study on Tics and Tourette’s, and helped shape local policies, including working with Derby City to improve access to mental health support for underrepresented groups.
We have also made sure to take care of our staff just as much as we care for the wider community. To support this, we created a Wellbeing Focus Group, giving staff a chance to share ideas and suggest improvements for their wellbeing. We’ve already set up a Wellbeing Space in our Derby office, with another one coming soon in Chesterfield. We’ve also started Wellbeing Walks to enjoy Derbyshire’s beautiful outdoors, and our Team Days are packed with activities designed to boost wellbeing.
For many of our practitioners, the best part of the year was graduating from university and becoming fully qualified Supervising Practitioners, Educational Mental Health Practitioners, and HI-CBT practitioners. We partnered with the University of Derby and the University of Northampton to give our staff the opportunity to earn qualifications while working to support children and young people. We’re incredibly proud of our 2024 graduates! Congratulations!
With all that, you might think we would take a break to prepare for the New Year, but we are not finished yet.
2025 has only just started, but we’re hitting the ground running with even more incredible news.
As part of the Wave 12 expansion in January 2025, we are launching two new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs). These are The Long Eaton School for the Erewash area and Derby College for Derby City area. We are looking forward to working more closely with these schools and their feeder schools.
January will also bring the exciting finale to months of hard work by talented young people from across Derby and Derbyshire – the reveal of our new logo! After months of submissions, shortlisting, and voting, we have a winner (plus two runners-up). This winning design will shape our new logo and branding across the service, and we can’t wait to see it roll out.
2024 has been an amazing year for Changing Lives. We’re incredibly thankful to our amazing staff for all their hard work, to the schools and partners who supported us, and to the children, young people, parents, carers, and families we work with every day.
Have a great year, and we’ll see you soon!
centres of excellence , Derby , Derby and Derbyshire Mental Health Support , MHSTs , Schools