The Big Question
The Big Question is one of the 4 research challenges that emerged from our priority setting work in 2019. Below you can find more detail about what research challenge sought to address, and examples of projects Emerging Minds has supported to achieve this.
How do we implement effective promotion of good mental health, prevention and early treatment for mental health problems at scale amongst children and young people?
- How do we target known protective, risk and/or maintenance factors in order to ultimately implement effective promotion, prevention and treatment?
- How do we deliver models and/or interventions that have already been shown to be effective, at scale (and in ways that are accessible and continue to be effective)?
Our stakeholder engagement work emphasised the need to include children and young people whose situations and/or characteristics place them at particular risk and/or children & young people with unmet needs.
The Big Question research challenge was also the theme of our third funding call which focused on:
- Why even when we know ‘what works’ isn’t this necessarily implemented in policy and practice?
- How do we improve evidence-based decision making? E.g. How can we successfully inform commissioning and policy decisions, and how can we ultimately increase implementation of research into practice?
Artwork credit: Tom Bailey
Projects seeking to address this research challenge include:
Optimising implementation of evidence in children and young people’s mental health
Research project led by Dr Holly Bear, University of Oxford
The implementation of evidence-based practice in Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services (CYMHS) across the UK: what can we learn from the Child Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) workforce?
Research project led by Dr Jonathan Parker, University of Exeter & CEDAR
Optimistic Minds: An innovative approach to evidence-based decision making in youth mental health through the performance of a State of the Youth
Research project led by Dr James Duggan, Manchester Met University
Building Research Implementation to Develop and Grow Evidence-based practice in children and young people’s mental health (BRIDGE)
Special Interest Research Group led by Dr Tim Clarke, University of East Anglia
You can find out more about our other research challenges and projects we have supported in relation to them via our research challenges page.
We have compiled a dedicated report (May 2023) on how we drew together our research challenges, the progress made towards them, and our perspective on what remains to be done. We would love you to take a look!