Lottery-funded scheme helping young adults living in supported accommodation with their mental health

Your Housing Group’s Coops Foyer is one of 10 foyers nationwide involved in the Connecting Minds programme, which supports residents aged 16 to 25 to take control of their mental health.

Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund’s Youth Voice programme, Connecting Minds was designed by youth-led enterprise States of Mind and responds to overwhelming evidence on the challenges faced by young people to develop healthy mental well-being.

It provides practical solutions to equip young people with the skills they need to understand, talk about and manage challenging feelings.

Extensive pilots showed 97 per cent of people in foyers were able to benefit from the programme by identifying and progressing their well-being goals. The Foyer Federation, of which Your Housing Group foyers are members, has recognised mental health support as a key need for foyers, with 80 per cent of residents identifying mental health as their biggest challenge.

A spokesman for Your Housing Group said: “Supporting the well-being of our residents is one of our key roles at the foyers. Our young residents often arrive experiencing mental health challenges and us being able to give them the tools to manage their mental health is so important.

“And this programme is not only going to benefit our residents, but the work to upskill our staff will help many residents in the following months and years.”

The foyer will receive £750 to invest in the personal well-being goals of residents.

They will also be able to access Selfology, an online mental well-being learning resource designed with young people; have a budget of £875 to develop a youth-led well-being project; and receive a range of mental well-being training, supervision and guidance from experts at States of Mind, Practice to Policy and Talk for Health, with a budget of £500 to contribute to staff cover over four separate Talk for Health online training days, upskilling staff to provide assistance to young people.

Foyer resident Shaun Bewley said: “Living at the foyer has definitely improved my mental health. Moving away from my family has given me the space and independence I needed.”

Fellow resident Kieran Hooper said: “At first moving away from family and feeling quite isolated my mental health declined slightly.

“I then started to form better relationships with staff and meet other young people and now I can see how this has positively impact my mental health.”

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