Latest news

Summer 2023 Update

The Blueprint project team are delighted to announce we won the Group category for this year’s Outstanding Contribution to Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) awards, which are hosted by the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester.

The awards recognise the inspirational and outstanding commitment to PPIE within the Faculty that has made a positive difference locally, nationally and globally. We were nominated for our collaborative approach with young co-researchers with lived experience to explore services for children & young people with common mental health problems.

Professor Sue Kirk (Co-PI) and Claire Fraser (Research Associate) attended the celebration event on 12  July to collect the award on behalf of the whole team and other team members joined the hybrid event on Zoom.

You can read more about our collaborative approach on Blueprint in our co-authored paper, A Blueprint for Involvement: Reflections of lived experience co-researchers and academic researchers on working collaboratively (Research Involvement and Engagement website).

Autumn/Winter 2022 Update

The Blueprint Research study final report is currently under review with our funder National Institute for Health and Care Research. We will share the report with you via our ‘Resources’ tab as soon as it is published. In the meantime, you can read the one-page lay summary of the project (PDF).

Spring/Summer 2022 Update

The Blueprint Research study has now officially ended and our final report is currently under review with our funder, NIHR. We are looking forward to being able to share the findings later this year when the report is published.

In the meantime, we are planning a range of dissemination activities for the autumn so please watch this space!

We would love to hear from you if you would like to know more about the Blueprint project and our dissemination plans – please contact us.

December 2021 Update

The Blueprint Research Team have now completed the fieldwork at the nine case study sites across England & Wales. We have completed 108 interviews with key stakeholders (children and young people, parents and carers and staff working in the service) about services provided at the sites to support children and young people with their mental health.

We are now busy working with our Co-Researchers to analyse the wealth of data from these interviews using Framework analysis. We look forward to being able to share the findings from our case study interviews in Spring 2022.

We will be moving into the final phase of the Blueprint project in the early part of 2022: Work stream 4. In this phase the research team (including the co-researchers) will use the final model typology, literature reviews and case study data to ‘meta-synthesise’ a model [or models] of effective and acceptable high quality service design for children and young people experiencing common mental health problems.

We would love to hear from you if you would like to know more about the Blueprint project – please contact us.

Spring 2021 Update

The Blueprint Research Team are currently busy with fieldwork at nine case study sites across England & Wales. At each of these sites the project researchers and co-researchers are engaging with key stakeholders (children and young people, parents and carers and staff working in the service) about services provided to support children and young people with their mental health.

We are also writing up our scoping review of the international literature on service models for children and young people with common mental health problems and working with our study Advisory Group to further develop the service model typology.

We would love to hear from you if you would like to know more about the Blueprint project – please contact us.

Young Person Co-Researchers join the Blueprint team

November 2020

We are delighted to welcome our six McPin Young Person Co-Researchers to the Blueprint team. Bekah, Georgia, James, Jodie, Keeya and Rose will be working with us during the case study phase of the Blueprint project to help us explore the experiences of children and young people and parents and carers in accessing services for common mental health problems and the experiences of service providers in delivering these services. Read more about the Co-Researchers (PDF).

Blueprint Case study phase begins!

September 2020

The Blueprint Research Team are now engaging with potential case study sites to take part in the fieldwork phase of the study. Services identified during our earlier mapping exercise will be invited to take part in a qualitative study exploring service provision for children and young people experiencing common mental health problems. We will seek to engage with key stakeholders (children and young people, parents and carers, service providers) at each case study site to explore experiences in accessing and delivering services. We are also keen to speak to children, young people and families who have not been able to, or have chosen not to access services at these sites to try and understand barriers to accessing services.

Recruiting Young Person Co-Researchers for the Blueprint project

March 2020

We are working with the McPin Foundation to recruit a team of Young Person Co-Researchers (aged 18 – 24 years) with lived experience of mental health issues to work on the Blueprint project. You can find out more and apply via the The McPin Foundation website.

The closing date for applications is Monday 16th March 2020 at 9.00am. Interviews will be held in London on Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th March.

An invitation for mental health service providers to complete our service mapping survey

July 2019

Are you a mental health service provider/ commissioner who delivers services for children and young people with common mental health problems in England and Wales?

We would like to invite you to complete our short online survey which will feed into Work stream 2 of the Blueprint project (the mapping exercise of current mental health services in England and Wales).

We are currently working on both Work Stream 1 (the systematic review of international literature) and Work Stream 2 (the mapping exercise of current mental health services in England and Wales).

For further information about the survey, please read our mental health service mapping survey FAQ document (PDF).