About Right Here

Right Here is a £6 million programme, which is running from 2009 to 2014, and is jointly managed by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Mental Health Foundation. It aims to develop effective new approaches to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of young people in the UK aged 16–25. Right Here focuses on intervening early to help young people at risk of developing mental health problems and on tackling the stigma associated with mental health problems that often prevents young people seeking help.

Right Here operates across four different projects, in Brighton and Hove, Fermanagh, Newham and Sheffield. Each project is led by a youth charity, working with other voluntary and statutory organisations. The participation of young people is fundamental to how all of the projects operate, as is partnership working.

Young people work with youth workers and mental health professionals to design, commission and deliver activities, while Right Here’s local  delivery organisations work with public sector partners to increase the influence and impact of their work. The projects are intended to bring lasting benefits to the young people they work with, the lead organisations and their partners, and youth mental health provision.

Right Here is also a partner in the Innovation Labs initiative, which is  developing a range of new digital tools to support the mental health of young people.

Right Here is being independently evaluated by the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR). The final evaluation report from IVAR will be published in the winter of 2014.

PHF and the MHF will use the learning from these evaluations to influence practice more widely and make the case for policy changes, where appropriate.

Interim results from the independent evaluation of Right Here show that its activities have made a number of differences to young people’s lives. They:

• Developed the confidence to consider and/or take up new opportunities.
• Acquired new skills and techniques for spotting and then handling changes in their emotions, especially the onset of feelings of anger and violence.
• Improved or made changes in their relationships with family members  and their peers, including leaving violent or damaging relationships.
• Felt able to be themselves in groups, and forge relationships with others, sometimes for the first time. This helped combat isolation; it also helped develop a sense of security and identity.
• Came to realise that ‘everyone has mental health’ and grasped its relevance to themselves, as well as understanding that there is less difference between those who are ‘well’ and ‘unwell’ than they first thought¹.

In December 2013, Right Here won the National Positive Practice Award for Mental Health and Primary Care.