Mind our Future

Mind our Future is a new National Lottery funded £10 million programme, based in Wales, to help young people have a resilient and a mentally healthy future.

As part of the programme launch, School of Sport and Health Sciences Principal Lecturer Dr Josh Cameron was invited to deliver a keynote on the topic of How Resilience is a Social Justice Issue.

Dr Cameron is a member of the university’s Centre for Resilience for Social Justice and the resilience research and practice network Boingboing. He shared learning from a broad range of resilience building projects including the Headstart Resilience Revolution in Blackpool.

Key points from the keynote were that resilience is not about blaming individuals or asking them to ‘pull up their socks’. Rather our research and practice show that effective resilience means:

• understanding resilience as a system in which when people collaborate together they are stronger.
• looking at what can be improved in whole systems around young people – friendships, schools, communities and services
• going beyond ‘coping’ with hardship to challenging and transforming systems to support young people well-being.

Dr Cameron said: “Our research and practice experience show that real resilience is not about focusing on individuals in isolation – that risks blaming young people for the challenges they face.

“Real resilience means looking at whole systems to effect changes that go beyond coping and transform systems for healthy and fairer futures.”

You can find out more about the programme on the Mind our Future website.