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Understanding young people’s mental health and wellbeing in Havering 

26 January 2024
Following the successful adoption of the Havering Youth Wellbeing Census across 10 schools in the area, the results have been published and Havering Council are working to develop actions from their new understanding of young people’s wellbeing in their borough.

We have been working with Havering Council to develop the Havering Youth Wellbeing Census, as part of their commitment to amplifying the voice of young people in the borough. The census was based on the #BeeWell survey developed in Greater Manchester and adjusted to cover topics of importance to young people and stakeholders in Havering, including vaping and travel to school.  

During June and July last year, 10 schools took part in the census with 2,287 students across year 8 and 10 being surveyed – this equates to 36% of the target demographic.  

I quite enjoyed taking part in the survey because it helped me understand more about other people’s mental health and what other people may be going through.

Lewis Cooper, Student at Sanders Draper School, Havering

The first results from across Havering are now live and available to view via the neighbourhood dashboard with further results to be added over the next few months. The dashboard allows service providers and partners across Havering and beyond to view the responses and find trends. For example, across the borough young people reported not getting enough sleep as a common issue – only 38.5% of females who took part felt they got enough sleep to feel awake and concentrate during the school day. 

The school taking part in the survey is really good because I know a lot of people coming out to teachers and friends saying, I’m not okay at the moment, which is really good. Now the school knows how to help other students going through these things.

Emilie Hezequez, Student at Sanders Draper School, Havering

Taking collective action 

The next steps will be the formation of a youth steering group in Havering who will design and advocate for changes in the area. This will bring together collective action across communities, businesses, the voluntary sector, the health sector, government and schools. 

Ian Elliott, Head of Innovation and Improvement at Havering Council said: 

My highlight of being part of the survey was the opportunity to hear from so many young people in the borough. To do that in one go over a sustained period of time in schools was a great way of making sure that we heard from a range of young people and were able to use their voices to inform change and commission services.

Sedina Lewis, Public Health Specialist for Havering Council said: 

It’s been really fantastic working with UCLPartners as we have had regular meetings along the way to guide us in delivering the survey, and also to help us build key relationships as a council as well with external partners. Working with somewhere like UCLPartners and other institutes who have that expertise about doing research and creating gives us confidence in the results and we look forward to sharing some of the things that we’ve been doing locally in response.

Ilse Lee, Implementation Manager at UCLPartners, said: 

We hope that the work in Havering will inspire other localities to adopt and use the survey to put young people’s voices at the heart of actions around their wellbeing.

The full questionnaire filled out by the students can be viewed here.