Written by rebecca on 06/02/2023 in Uncategorized

Looking Back over last year and Our Plans for 2023

We’ve had an AMAZING 2022 and are hugely excited about what’s in store in 2023… so thought we’d post a ‘NEWS UPDATE’ 😊

Here we go…

Horizon Plan (online course)

We’ve finished filming and are now editing the 2^nd module of the course which we plan to have online in Feb. We have 725 parents/carers learning from the course and can’t wait to get you this next installment of guidance and support.

Horizon Plan (live course)

In August we won a contract from the charity Caring Town to deliver a program to support a group of 12 parents caring for a child/teen struggling with mental health. The funding given to us by Caring Town comes from a National Lottery Reaching Communities grant and has the potential to run for 3 years. Our team lead fortnightly evening sessions and the program has been so well received by the parents that Caring Town have now doubled our funding so we can also pilot a group to support parents of primary school children suffering with mental health. 

Some parent feedback:

“The sessions have been a lifeline for me at the right time”

“Perfect balance between leading sessions and allowing time for talking/listening to others”

“The team leaders are all encouraging, supporting and so positive. They have great examples of their own experience that will help my own child”

Assembly and Workshops building mental health resilience in schools

Jade and Joel are delivering up to 5 assemblies and workshops each week at schools in Devon UK. We’re getting fantastic feedback from the schools, which has made it a popular project for District Councillors to fund with small grants and it’s really enjoyable working directly with the pupils. Here’s a little video of a workshop: https://fb.watch/h6Xmlnv0Kn/

Monitoring and evaluation

We’ve partnered with the department of Psychology at Exeter Uni and have a PHD researcher to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the Horizon Plan (both online and live courses). The idea being to improve the program and gather data illustrating its effectiveness to secure further funding to scale the program, and eventually get statutory commissioning. 

Commissioning by Public Health Devon

In Spring 2022 we were invited by Public Health Devon to lead a Task and Finish group that represents parents/guardians, carers and siblings of people who self-harm or who have self-harmed across Devon to map services and support and make suggestions for improvement. We accepted this unpaid project because of the PR/prestige value of the commission but have found it difficult to get input from parents/carers. Chloe will be producing our report shortly and submitting it and it will support Public health Devon to “identify need, map provision and identify gaps in support for all those affected by self-harm across Devon”.

Press & Media

Jade won the BBC’s ‘Make a Difference Award 2022’ in the category of ‘Volunteer’ for her work visiting schools across Devon. Click here to see Jade’s acceptance speech and interview on the BBC news.

Jade was interviewed on the BBC about her work building mental health resilience in schools. Click here to listen to the interview.

Joel was interviewed by the website Dad.info about his experience supporting Jade’s mental health. Click here to see the article.

Focus for 2023

• We will rebuild our website to reflect our growth and new projects
• We are looking for a grant writing agency or freelancer to allow us to target larger and longer scale grant funding
• We are continuing to produce modules of our online course, advertising and marketing to increase sign-up and looking at how we can increase the course completion rate.
• We are running two live pilot programs funded by Caring Town and exploring how to scale this (train the trainer)
• We will work with Exeter University’s Department of Psychology to improve monitoring and evaluation of our projects.
• We are launching charged for small group and 1-2-1 coaching to reduce our reliance on grants and enable parents to receive our full support whilst waiting for new online modules to be released.
• We are looking at ways to scale Jade’s assembly and workshops by recruiting and training other young people to deliver them around the UK.
• All the above is of course dependent on funding

 I’m sure I’ve missed loads but hope that’s enough for now 😊

Joel – Co-founder