Mapping Universal Prevention and Promotion Interventions for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing: a Rapid Overview

Barnardo’s is one of the leading Children’s charities in the United Kingdom. As part of their Core Priority Programme (2018-2021) Barnardo’s identified mental health and wellbeing as a key priority area1. The organisation also identified that they wished to focus on a social model of mental health, and to consider prevention and early intervention. In order to begin this work Barnardo’s commissioned research to provide a “mapping of the types of work/policy that is currently considered good practice” and “to include and identify aspects which would be considered extremely transformational”. The intention was to inform stakeholder discussions facilitated by Barnardo’s in two Local Authority areas in Scotland and England. As an initial first step, mapping of evidence was required in order that stakeholders could identify gaps in existing practice as well as priorities for future development. Therefore Barnardo’s commissioned 2 overviews -one on universal prevention and one on selective prevention in order to inform this work. This report outlines the first overview: a rapid overview of reviews to provide a mapping of universal prevention and promotion interventions for child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing. This report provides a summary of this work, undertaken by the Centre for Health Policy, University of Strathclyde. This report can be read in conjunction with the second overview (Macintyre & Karadzhov 2019b).