Introduction

Wellbeing is about how we feel and how we cope with everyday difficulties. We do not have to feel happy all of the time to have positive wellbeing. However, if you are finding it difficult to cope with everyday life, you might want to look at different ways to support your mental health.

Somerset Emotional and Mental Health Support

The Somerset Emotional and Mental Health Route Map provides a brief overview of some of the key services and support avenues to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in Somerset.

Somerset Young Mental Health Champions LifeHacks for Mental Health project

LifeHacks are a series of practical tips and ideas, developed by young people, to help promote and support young people to look after their own, and their friends, mental health.  They are packed with ideas and links to support your own mental health and your friends’ mental health.  They include true stories from people who’ve tried them out.  They are great to share with others who need it.

• Little Book of Mental Health LifeHacks
• Little Book of Mental Health LifeHacks to support a friend.
• Somerset LifeHacks website

This project was set up to help build resilience through engagement with young people to improve self-esteem and emotional literacy of young people in Somerset. It seeks to create a ‘culture of openness’, for example creating acceptance that it is okay to talk about emotional and mental health problems, talk about recovery and hope, see the whole person and not just the problem.

The LifeHacks were created by a diverse group of young people who volunteered to come together following a series of focus groups held across Somerset exploring mental health. A key theme that emerged was that young people were desperate for knowledge about how to help their friends with mental health issues.

Kooth

Lauren from Kooth talks us through the online mental health and wellbeing service for children and young people in Somerset, during the Local Offer Live October 2022.

Mental Health Toolkit

The Mental Health Toolkit has information and guidance to help you understand, respond to and manage self-injury. The Self-Injury Pathway Project (SIPP) Guide offers clear, practical advice and genuine insight into the most misunderstood and feared behaviour of self-injury. Shaped by young people living and coping with self-injury; their knowledge, honesty and bravery has been instrumental in creating this guide during the SIPP project which ended in March 2021. And the Supporting Families Plan has been created to provide practical, easy to implement support for the parents/carers and siblings of young people who self-injure.

Somerset Big Tent

Somerset Big Tent is a partnership of Charities, Charitable Incorporated Organisations and Community Interest Companies. These are organisations that provide a range of services including positive activities, therapeutic services and specialist support to increase positive wellbeing and improve mental health within children and young people aged 5-25 in Somerset.

All services on the Somerset Big Tent website have gone through a quality and safety assurance process, this means that Somerset Big Tent has met with each organisation and are satisfied with the key documents and information that they have provided.

Somerset Big Tent is funded by NHS Somerset and facilitated by Young Somerset.