The problem is not that children have mental health needs.
The problem is HOW they are treated by the system.
The problem is systematic and is increasingly recognised by politicians, by professionals, by children and young people, and by their loved ones. The consequences are huge personal suffering, economic expenditure, and a growing social chasm.
WE ARE THE MOVEMENT FOR RADICAL KINDNESS,
AND WE NEED YOUR HELP.
PLEDGE TO RADICAL KINDNESS.
What is Radical Kindness?
A trauma informed, research driven blueprint of guiding principles for ALL children’s services
Whilst public servants have the Nolan Principles, and Businesses have Fair Trade and B Corp, there is currently no benchmark for best practise for how we interact with children with Mental Health Needs, including those who are at early intervention stage.
Professionals are exhausted and demoralised. Good professionals are leaving the sector. Families and Young People have been telling us for years that how they are treated can make the difference between recovery and further decline. Yet there is no formalised system for how this can or should be incorporated into practice. Love Squared are creating a blueprint, embedded in love, for any children’s professional to deploy in their everyday practice. Many professionals will already be deploying these principles but mandating them will become the permission they need to celebrate them, making radical the norm.
Next steps:
1. A National Pledge Campaign to kickstart this vision
We will generate a national pledge campaign to get children and young people, parents, and carers, off duty professionals browsing Facebook, young professionals who are passionate about mental health, and students pledging their support with a simple visual ‘sticker’ campaign to be shared on social media:
2. High quality National training provision for all children's professionals
We will launch online digital training, a ten-hour block of high quality training which can be undertaken by professional teams such as schools, NHS and social services teams across the UK.
These campaigns and the training can be organised and delivered within the operational capacity of a community membership digital platform which also enables wide scope for further growing the community of passionate advocates and change ambassadors.
Links to University and Health Research Teams create opportunities to develop further and benchmark and create evaluation systems to measure mid to long term social impact which can become a system across the UK, and potentially globally.
3. Radical Kindness in Action
We plan for our front-line services to grow with the movement so that there is a second hub in a rural retreat location with access to nature, therapeutic relationships with animals as well as play therapy, counselling and advocacy.
Our holistic, case managed, and imaginatively delivered services which link education to therapeutic interventions will be a working example of the Radical Kindness blueprint open to researchers and interested parties as well as service users.
Easy to implement, low cost, easy to scale, and with quantifiable opportunities for social impact measurement as well as sophisticated opportunities for ways to embed in systemic practice, Radical Kindness for Children’s Mental Health becomes the accepted principal framework for the Children’s Sector.
We will be the thought leaders with increasing expertise and the lead for training, but by building a community of ambassadors, the children and young people will shape their own Radically Kind Future.
