Youth Mental Health
STEPS – A Youth Mental Health Programme has been a huge success!
When Well Foundation were presented with an opportunity to help improve Youth Mental Health in West and North Auckland, we were thrilled to come onboard to help facilitate this important work.
STEPS-A (Skills Training for Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents) is a social and emotional skills, evidence-based, training programme for intermediate school age rangatahi who may be at risk of developing, or already be experiencing, mental health problems.
With generous support from our community partners; The Trusts, Pro Care, Henderson Rotary, Downtown Rotary and The Lottery Grant Board, STEPS – A rolled out across 17 Intermediate schools.
Schools were provided with expert clinicians from Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand’s Marinoto Child and Youth Mental Health Services to co-train with teachers for the first year. This allowed teachers to watch and learn from trained mental health clinicians experienced in DBT and gain the confidence to run the programme independently.
The programme ran for 30 weeks at each school, from 2022- 2024.
Analysis of the STEPS A programme was performed by an independent research team from AUT – Including two health and clinical psychologists, two counselling psychologists, a research assistant, a lived experience researcher and a biostatistician. They completed a multistep evaluation of qualitative and quantitative data.
Statistically significant improvements were found in the following areas:
- Emotional difficulties
- Improved peer relationship
- Hyperactive/inattentive symptoms
- Total difficulties
- Internalizing behaviours
- Externalizing behaviours
- Skills to cope
- Blaming others as a way of coping
- Strategies to manage emotions
- Accepting emotions
- Goal setting
- Impulse control
- Clarity of emotions
- Life satisfaction
- Mindfulness
Key Assessment Findings
STEPS A was perceived to be universally useful.
The behavioral changes from the programme were noticeable in all areas of life.
Positive psychological changes were noticed by rangatahi.
Our impact is only made possible through the following incredibly generous organisations:
