Reflections on Children & Young People’s Mental Health Webinar
The first in a series of short lunchtime sessions for health and care professionals, the webinar hosted on 24th July 2025 and chaired by Jayne Howard, NCCH Programme Manager, focused on the role of creative health in children and young people’s mental health, with examples of how this is working in practice.
Below we have summarised some key themes and quotes of the session. You can watch the full session back here
The session included a range of speakers and how they have used creative health to tackle specific issues:
Dr Katherine Taylor, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Lancaster and Morecambe Specialist Services Network
Kat discussed leading on the Greater Manchester Arts, Culture, and Mental Health Programme, which ran for 3.5 years and demonstrated the effectiveness of creative interventions. Kat emphasised the importance of personal experiences and relationships in changing hearts and minds and the need for external funding to support innovative work, as well as the programmes evaluation process, which included developing a kit to help artists and commissioners use evaluation tools effectively.
“It is about empowering safe and cost effective approaches….I would like to linger on the word safe, because in my view, both personally and professionally, there's an overuse of medication, particularly among young people. And I think that's not emphasised enough, the fact that many of these [creative health] interventions don't carry side effects or can't be overdosed on”.
“Commissioned work demonstrates that young people with complex or risky presentations who might be missing from home or disengaged from CAMHS, can benefit from more innovative interventions like music”.
Cheng-An Tan, Senior Arts Psychotherapist, Sandwell CAMHS
Ann shared her art therapy approach in Sandwell CAMHS, emphasising the therapeutic benefits of art. She also highlighted a Hospital Rooms project that not only hosted a range of workshops but also transformed the clinical buildings into a welcoming space which boosted young people's confidence and engagement.
“The young people I work with are often neurodivergent, and they often find 1:1 engagement a bit confronting or a bit intrusive, and so by inviting art into the space, we can then have this joint activity that eases some of the pressure for them and also supports with their engagement.”
“Often they would find it quite nervous coming into a new area or space. But sometimes they will get curious about the artwork [around the building] so it would help with a conversation - what do you think the image might look like, what does that colour remind you off, and so it removes the stress from them and prompts a better engagement in their assessment.”
David McQuillan, Creativity and Health Programme Manager, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
David detailed a range of projects in South West Yorkshire that have had a significant impact, including a music-making game for hospital wards and a creative wellbeing app for CAMHS patients. David emphasised the importance of co-production in project development and the need for funders to be flexible to support the process.
“We have success embedding our creativity and health work across the NHS when we address some of the tricky issues, some of the knotty problems that services can't deal with in any other way.”
“One project which included an immersive music making game, co-produced by young people, re-imagined the hospital as they wanted to see it and created a game where their characters goes through the hospital and encounters lots of other characters which they can heal. What really stuck with me was a parent suggested their little girl was anxiously awaiting surgery, and this was the first thing they said that had stopped her asking about it.”
Dr Hermione Roy, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, West Cornwall CAMHS and Stephanie Wallace, Mental Health Practitioner and Dramatherapist at Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Hermione Roy and Stephanie Wallace described a small but impactful art project at West Cornwall CAMHS that boosted young people's engagement and led to the formation of a participation group, which has been instrumental in improving the clinic space and addressing young people's needs. They described how the project also had a positive impact on staff morale and provided a therapeutic creative experience for young people and staff alike.
“The project was really small compared with impressive things other people have done, but it's had a big impact. Originally it came from an audit that I did because the state of the building was terrible, then we ran some artist facilitated workshops about what would be useful for the young people’s wellbeing, what do they use, and what's good for their mental health, and from that co-produced a range of striking posters, which generated a lot of conversation”
“Those posters encouraged a range of young people to get involved in a participation group, which focused on a number of things including; changing the waiting room environment as they felt that the clinic space, in particular, the waiting room, just wasn't really fit for purpose, and not adolescent friendly; Also the young people had talked about their experience with GP clinics and feeling quite validated by some of those initial conversations about their mental health, so they wanted to feed back some of that to the GP’s” .
