The power of community in supporting children and young people’s mental health

Each year, Mental Health Awareness Week offers us a moment to pause, reflect, and reconnect with why we do what we do. This year’s theme is community, which feels especially resonant to our work. At Anna Freud, we know that supporting children and young people’s mental health is never the work of one person or one profession alone. It’s the product of the relational ecosystem around the child: time with peers, and trusted relationships with adults and safe spaces to connect, learn and grow. Whether it’s a youth worker in a local hub supporting a young person’s passion, a teaching assistant helping them reflect on their everyday challenges, or a parent taking the first step and asking for help, community is where wellbeing and mental health support should begin.

Why is community so important?

When we talk about “community” we’re talking about more than locality or geography. We mean the networks of people who surround a child or young person: family, friends, teachers, mentors, neighbours, and peers. These everyday relationships form the emotional ecosystem that provides the scaffolding that helps children and young people feel safe, seen, and supported. It is the context in which they can learn, grow and thrive.

This is because good mental health doesn’t happen in isolation. Young people flourish when they are part of environments where they are listened to, where their needs are understood, and where adults work together to support them early, before challenges escalate. We know that communities play a critical role in this, and we will continue to emphasise this to parliamentarians and sector leads as we develop our policy and influencing work. This includes our advocacy around increased support for community-based early intervention services like family hubs and promoting a national wellbeing measurement in schools, which are a vital part of every child’s community.

In recent years, many children have faced significant mental health pressures, from the impact of the pandemic to rising academic demands. As we outlined in our manifesto, Thinking Differently, one in five young people in England has a probable mental health disorder. However, time and again, we’ve seen the strength of community: parents and carers forming support circles, schools working together with our practitioners, and young people stepping up to look after one another.

Spotlight on our work

At Anna Freud, we’re proud to work at the intersection of research, policy, and clinical support, bridging knowledge and action across the communities we serve. This year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme gives us the perfect opportunity to celebrate some of the ways we’re helping to build stronger, more connected systems of support for children and young people.

Our work on the National Centre for Family Hubs reinforces the importance of bringing local services together under one roof. By supporting each area to develop effective, inclusive family hubs, we helped to ensure that families could access mental health, parenting, and wellbeing support in one trusted place.

Another example is our role in supporting the Fund the Hubs campaign, including recently endorsing the Blueprint for Community Mental Health Hubs. As partners in this important and timely work, we’ve contributed evidence and insight to help shape a future where every young person has access to welcoming, accessible spaces in their own community at places where they can seek early help without fear or stigma. We’re also working to ensure policymakers understand that these spaces must focus on mental health and wellbeing rather than on offending behaviours, as we know that this is crucial to build trust between young people and community services.

In schools, we continue to provide mental health support and work alongside staff to build a whole-school approach to wellbeing. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, we launched the Schools and Colleges Early Support Service (SCESS) to support young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties, like anxiety and low mood along with staff, parents and carers. We know that delivering the right support at the right time is key to help children and young people develop and maintain good mental health, and that trusted adults like education staff, parents and carers all need to be empowered and supported to know how best to help.

These projects all share a common thread: they allow communities to support children and young people early, locally, and with care.

Finally, I want to note that none of this work would be possible without the passion, expertise, and dedication across all of our teams at Anna Freud. From the research that underpins everything we do to our staff working directly with young people and those building mentally healthy schools and colleges, we are all helping to strengthen the communities we serve. This week is a moment to appreciate the incredible team effort that goes into making our mission to close the gap in children and young people’s mental health.

As we mark Mental Health Awareness Week, I’m reminded that building strong communities isn’t a one-off effort: it’s a continuous commitment. The work we’ve done together shows what’s possible when services are integrated, evidence is applied, and we listen to children and young people.

Looking ahead, we will keep pushing for systems that put communities at the heart of mental health support. We’ll continue advocating for joined-up services, investing in early intervention, and sharing what works so that no young people slip through the gaps.

Find out more

Find out about how we promote mental health in schools and colleges.

Read our Thinking differently manifesto which brings together young voices, scientific insight, research and over 70 years of expertise from Anna Freud to call for an increased focus on early intervention and prevention to close the gap in children and young people’s mental health.

We are also supporting the Future Minds campaign, which is calling for the Government to deliver urgent reform to boost children and young people’s mental health services.