Sports psychology offers valuable insights into how and why elite athletes achieve success. Importantly, athletes use mental skills to help improve their performance and well-being. But what if we could extend these benefits to include other demographics? The SPRINT project team, led by Dr Jennifer Cumming at the University of Birmingham (UK), is an experienced group of community-engaged researchers with backgrounds in sports psychology, strengths-based approaches and well-being. We apply sports psychology techniques by working in partnership with communities and transforming knowledge into action.

Since 2014, we have tackled key questions: how can we share and implement strengths-based practice in the wider community? How can we use our expertise to facilitate positive development for at-risk groups? How can we engage those hard-to-reach groups?

16-25 year olds are a key demographic. Between these ages, young people transition from adolescence to early adulthood. This transition alone can be challenging, but when additionally facing social exclusion, young people become increasingly vulnerable to health inequalities.

Many in this age group experience challenges engaging with opportunities for work, training and education [not in education, employment or training (NEET) and experience associated homelessness.

Annually, around 4.2 million young people experience homelessness worldwide. Further, continued investment by governments is clearly required. Indeed, the UK government recently released figures indicating a pledge to increase spending in the homelessness sector over 2020/21.

MST4LifeTM

In a unique approach to reaching vulnerable young people, we worked with leading UK housing service St Basils to co-develop, deliver and evaluate a bespoke life skills programme: My Strengths Training for LifeTM (MST4LifeTM). A summary of MST4LifeTM supporting evidence is available here.

We use evidence-based techniques adapted from sports psychology to create an intervention with tangible impact; improving the health, well-being and social inclusion of at-risk youth. Adopting a strengths-based approach, we equip young people with the mental skills, such as those used by top athletes, required to build resiliency.

Training is provided to frontline staff to deliver and/or champion the programme, thereby ensuring its long-term sustainability within the service.

A highlight of MST4Life™ for the young people is participation in an outdoor residential trip to the University of Birmingham’s Raymond Priestley Centre in the Lake District, marking the culmination of their achievements. This provides opportunities for further development in a new and challenging setting.

Figure 1: Photo courtesy of MST4Life™. Participants enjoy the view while exploring the Lake District during their stay at the Raymond Priestley Centre

Expanding our reach

Ongoing evaluations highlight the programme’s positive impact on homeless young people. Participants have shown significant improvements in key psychological markers indicative of wellbeing, such as resilience, self-worth and confidence.

Those beginning the programme NEET are likely to be engaged in education, employment or training 1 month after completing MST4Life™. With these consistent, positive results, how could we expand the reach of the programme?

Mental Skills Training Toolkit

Through consultation work with local homelessness charities and organisations St Basils, Youth Voice and Homeless Link, we co-designed a freely-available strengths-based training resource for use within the youth homelessness sector by following 6 guiding principles shown below:

·       co-created
·       supported by evidence
·       user friendly and practical
·       flexible and adaptable
·       accessible
·       provides guidance on implementation and overcoming barriers

The resulting Mental Skills Training Toolkit is a collection of evidence-based mental skills tools promoting strengths-based approaches in the community. As it has been designed to be used in a collaborative manner, service users and staff decide which tools are most relevant to them and goals are co-produced.

Mental Skills Training Toolkit

Download for free now at www.sprintproject.org/toolkit

Mental Skills Training Delivery Guide

Download for free now at www.sprintproject.org/toolkit

Content & benefits

The toolkit is composed of 6 strengths-based tools:

Strengths Profile adapted from performance profiling
Goal-setting motivating users to set goals and work towards them
If/Then addressing perceived barriers
Emotional Awareness Grid adapted from mood mapping techniques
STOP teaching coping strategies for stressful events
Dream Team considering support networks to improve emotional wellbeing; recently guest featured on the app Fika

The Strengths Profile is one of our principal tools. It encourages users to reflect on their personal character strengths, fostering confidence and self-esteem:

Strengths Profile

Example section of the Strengths Profile tool from the Mental Skills Training Toolkit

Delivery guide

At a recent symposium we unveiled our toolkit to delegates from various sectors. Attendees positively viewed this new resource and provided valuable feedback into what else would be needed to make it a feasible resource.

A key recommendation was on the need for development of an accompanying guide to inform best practice for delivery, ensuring the toolkit is delivered in a psychologically informed manner consistent with strengths-based practice. We therefore designed our delivery guide as informed by central concepts from Solution-Focused Brief Therapy.

Successful implementation of mental skills training relies on using the right sort of communication to enable connection. Those delivering the toolkit are encouraged to apply solution-focused strategies and adopt behaviours that nurture young people’s psychological needs.

Impact & feedback

Our resources aim to help services implement programmes that can be adapted to suit their unique needs and context and provide them with:

access to specialist knowledge
provision of practical resources
confidence in using evidence-based tools

We value feedback to ensure that the resource benefits service users and organisations. Feedback has so far been extremely positive. You can view the video from our recent launch event: youtu.be/Gr2aU0XqLBQ

Future steps

Our next focus will be on further evaluation to assess impact. We are also developing a commissioning toolkit to compliment our resources; aiming to further benefit those who wish to implement strengths-based practice.

Interested in learning more about strengths-based mental skills? You can download our new mental skills toolkit and delivery guide, explore our free resources and read our regularly updated blog.

What are your favourite strengths-based tools for working with young people where you are? We’d love to hear them in the comments section on our website, or on Twitter using #MSTtoolkit #MST4Life.

References:

Miller, L. (2009). Mood Mapping: Plot Your Way to Emotional Health and Happiness. London: Pan Macmillan.

How to improve homeless youth resiliency using sports psychology - the SPRINT project