"My job is about supporting and listening to young people..." - A guest blog by Liz Neill from YoungMinds

Thanks to Aimee for giving me a guest blog space!!

 Hi everyone, I am the Yorkshire regional worker for YoungMinds, a charity who support the emotional well-being and mental health of children and young people.

My job is about supporting and listening to young people so they can have a voice and influence to help shape services for the better, and to help young people campaign for better services and raise awareness about mental health issues. 
We have now launched our biggest campaign to date, ‘YoungMinds Vs: Fight the Pressure’. Taking into account the voices and experiences of over 3500 young people across the country, ‘YoungMinds Vs’ focuses on battling 5 main issues that these young people have identified as affecting them the most:

·        YoungMinds Vs Bullying – “Stop the Rot”

·        YoungMinds Vs No Work – “Fight for our Future”

·        YoungMinds Vs No Help – “Make Your Feelings Loud”

·        YoungMinds Vs School Stress – “Rewrite the Rules”

·        YoungMinds Vs Sexed Up – “Don’t Believe the Hype”

 This ‘mass movement’ aims to get thousands more young people involved, from a range of backgrounds

YoungMinds Vs’ are looking for young people between 11 and 25 to join their network of young activists, and to give as many of us as possible the chance to speak out; we’re also looking for organisations to sign up too.  So, if you’re reading this and you feel strongly about any of the issues about, there are a few things you can do

·        Show your support by signing up to the campaign at

·        Like our Facebook page and share the messages about the campaign on line

·        Tweet about our campaign and join the conversation #fightthepressure

·        Come along to one of our free training events in Yorkshire – the next one is likely to be on 13^th September in York  - go to our get active page to find out more

·        Ask your school or youth group if they want us to come in and deliver free workshops to their young people about one of the campaign areas

·        contact me, Liz Neill 07817771181  elizabeth.neill@youngminds.org.uk  (Facebook Liz YoungMinds) to find out about other events which are happening in your area.