Innovative Project with Sheffield Children's Hospital Emergency Department
We’re thrilled to be launching a new, innovative project, placing Golddigger Trust youth workers directly into the Emergency Department at Sheffield Children’s Hospital to support young people with their emotional wellbeing needs. This project is the first of its kind in South Yorkshire and we are so excited for how this will help us reach those young people who most need our services, helping young people find the hope and light in their lives at a point where they can only see darkness.
Thanks to NHS Charities Together (via the South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation), we have been given an incredible £128,300 to bring this vision to life! This funding, spread over two years, will allow us to increase our capacity for support on our wellbeing programmes, as well as fund our Wellbeing Team being present in A&E, offering ‘here and now’ support to young people around their emotional wellbeing, and a follow up appointment in the community within the next 3 weeks. This grant will also fund an additional 100 places per year on our different wellbeing programmes and courses, ensuring that young people don’t have to wait to access the help they need.
This new project was first dreamt up after listening to the stories of many of the young people we work with who had come to us via an Emergency Department referral, and thinking about how we could better reach and help them in that moment.
Young people share how support from Golddigger Trust has helped them
In Sheffield, young people experiencing a mental health crisis such as self harm, actual or attempted overdose, or suicidal thoughts are referred to the Emergency Department. In addition, many young people attend A&E when struggling with other emotional wellbeing concerns, whether this is low mood, eating disorders, anxiety or other struggles when they don’t know where else to access help. Whilst all of these young people are in a state of crisis, not all require emergency medical care. After initial assessment, often medical professionals can have nowhere to refer this group of young people if they don’t meet the high criteria required for referral to a specialist, clinical service, resulting in the young people often feeling rejected or unsupported.
Previously, young people would often be advised to get in touch with Golddigger Trust and given a flyer for our services. However, we recognised that this wasn’t enough and young people often felt unheard or that they ‘needed to get worse’ in order to have their needs met.
“For a few years now, we have been dreaming of this project and so I was delighted to work with the Sheffield Children’s Hospital and The Children’s Hospital Charity to create this project and take a step further in our aim to reach every young person in Sheffield who needs support with their wellbeing. I’m so excited to see first-hand the impact that this project will have - I can’t wait to start my shifts in A&E too and meet the brilliant young people and staff that we get the honour of helping.”
By ensuring one of our youth workers are at the Emergency Department at key times, young people who would otherwise be at risk of falling through the gaps will be able to have a chat about their situation and be given the opportunity for a follow up appointment, either at our centre, or online, with that same youth worker within three weeks.
A big thank you to NHS Charities Together, The Sheffield Children’s Hospital, Sheffield Hospitals Charity, The Children’s Hospital Charity and South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation for partnering with us in this life changing project over the next two years.
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