Developing mental health programmes for children, adolescents and young adults - Strengthening the competence of health personnel to ensure quality of care

The project will establish supportive environments to foster mental health in the family, in kindergartens, schools and programmes that prevent the development of mental disorders. It will improve the accessibility, availability, integrity, interconnectivity and quality of mental health services.

The project aims to achieve the following objectives:

• development and national dissemination of mental health promotion and mental disorder prevention programmes and destigmatisation in children and adolescents;
• upgrading the competences of health, education, education, social care and non-governmental workers;
• expansion of mental health services in the context of regular work in health, education, education, social care and non-governmental sectors.

With the planned activities to develop mental health programmes for children, adolescents and young adults the decision makers will:

• enable the systemic implementation of early, proven effective primary care interventions for particularly vulnerable groups of children and adolescents and their parents;
• ensure the provision of professional education, training and professional support to programme providers;
• promote the evaluation of mental health-enhancing programmes.

Measures will be implemented to contain the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, which has a major impact on the mental health of individuals and society as a whole, and in particular the mental health of children, adolescents and young adults. Actions will contribute to strengthening mental health, prevention of mental disorders, destigmatisation and competence building for health, education, education, social care and non-governmental sectors.

By educating educators to implement proven and effective mental health promotion and prevention programmes for mental disorders and destigmatisation in children, adolescents and young adults, the implementation of the project will go beyond the field of health and will make an important contribution to a more comprehensive cross-cutting implementation of mental health measures and thus to strengthening the mental health of the population.

The project will improve the accessibility, availability, integrity, interconnectivity and quality of mental health services. The implementation of the project will contribute to a more comprehensive implementation of mental health actions. 

The project is divided into 5 main work packages:

1. Strengthening parental skills (education and training of providers, expert materials...);
2. Early identification of problems and preventive work with adolescents (early recognition tools for mental health problems, guidelines/protocol for screening, pilot project for screening in local settings...);
3. Overcoming anxiety (education and training of providers);
4. Addressing non-chemical addiction (education and training for providers, development of guidelines on how to deal with...);
5. Prevention of suicide behaviour (screening and evaluation procedures and ways of dealing with adolescents at risk of suicide).

The Recovery and Resilience Facility provides funding of EUR 2.5 million, while the total investment is worth EUR 3 million. The project started in January 2023 and will be finalised by August 2026.

Additional links:

• https://www.gov.si/zbirke/projekti-in-programi/razvoj-programov-za-duse…
• https://www.gov.si/zbirke/javne-objave/javni-razpis-razvoj-programov-za…
• https://www.gov.si/novice/2024-07-30-znani-rezultati-razpisa-razvoj-pro…

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