As per our earlier updates, Students for Kids International Projects (SKIP) is developing a Mental Health Programme. This programme aims to support and improve the mental health of children and young people. This is an umbrella programme, under which we hope to develop a variety of projects with different partners. This is part of SKIP’s new method of working, where we are establishing a research base prior to linking with community partners.

The initial phase of this programme has been to research current areas of interest, to decide what areas could benefit from our input. From an initial literature search, we formed a long-list of potential topics. The Research Team, led by Dr Eleanor Morris and Miss Ayomide Adetosoye, narrowed this list to 5 key areas for further research: social media, sleep, teenage pregnancy, abuse and neurodivergence. We selected these topics as they are popular in the literature currently, and we were interested to see how they relate to the wider Global Health picture. We also revisited the work of the previous SKIP Emotional Wellbeing project, developed by Dr Natalie Cook prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After conducting literature reviews and competitor analyses, the Research Team presented their work to the SKIP Board of Trustees in April 2024. In this meeting, we discussed each topic in detail, including assessing which other organisations were already working in the field, and what SKIP may be able to offer. For example, neurodivergence is still largely undiagnosed in many communities and hence it could be challenging for SKIP to approach this topic at present.

The outcome of this meeting is that SKIP will be reviving the former Emotional Wellbeing intervention, which used classroom-based toolkits to deliver teaching to children, but with flexibility to include some of the new research topics depending on community needs. For example, if a partner feels that sleep and mental health is a need in their community, then we may adapt our resources to account for this. We have chosen this approach because we are seeking to form long-standing partnerships, and our projects are not geographically-bound, so hence we need to maintain some flexibility around content.

The next stage will now be project development, where we will begin to reach-out to potential partners (watch this space!) to see how our classroom-based interventions can be delivered on the ground. We will be evaluating our current resources, to see whether any areas need updating, and developing tools for monitoring and evaluation. Our aim is to have a pilot project up-and-running within the next 6 months, which will help to inform further charity growth.

Thank you for reading, we will continue to provide updates as the Mental Health Programme develops.

Dr Eleanor Morris, SKIP Trustee - Mental Health Programme Lead