The theme for Mental Health Awareness Week this year is community – coming together for mental health.
As part of WCPP’s Poverty Stigma Insight Network, WCPP and Save The Children Cymru brought young people from two South Wales schools together in a special event to share their youth-led research on the drivers and effects of poverty and stigma on their generation with policy makers, practitioners and lived experience experts. The group also explored potential solutions that could make a real difference to young people and their communities.
The young people highlighted four key areas they feel must be addressed – and these themes are also reflected in a report they are preparing to publish. These are:
- Money and support including mental health support
- Access to opportunities including education and play
- Positive and healthy relationships
- Voice and respect
The young people shared strong feelings about issues that directly affect the physical and mental wellbeing of their peers including:
“Poverty Stigma says that people in poverty are bad. Poverty is bad, not people in poverty”.
WCPP Senior Research Fellow Amanda Hill-Dixon – who leads WCPP’s poverty stigma work, said: “Collaborating with Save the Children Cymru has been a delight from start to finish.
“The young people were well-prepared and gave a deeply impactful presentation to policy makers and key practitioners.
“The quote that really stood out to me was one young woman who said, ‘stigma says that people in poverty are bad... poverty is bad, not people in poverty’.
“We will be feeding our learnings from this Power of Voice event into our work on poverty stigma to inform local and national policy makers and practitioners of the effects of stigma and develop some potential local and national solutions.”
Melanie Simmonds, Head of Save the Children Cymru added: “The partnership with WCPP enabled young people from our Power of Voice project to speak directly with decision makers about changes they’d like to see to address child poverty stigma in Wales.
“It was amazing for adults and young people to share a space and come up with some solutions to try to tackle some of the most important issues for children and young people in Wales.
“They’ve told us how important it is for them to have a voice with local and national decision makers and about the importance of having a childhood – having somewhere safe to play and meet locally is very important to them. It will be exciting to see where this project goes from here.”