Ben Eckett says community sport organisations “must pick up the slack” whilst children’s mental health services continue to be overwhelmed.
Ben is Director and Co-Founder of our specialist partners Gloves Not Gunz and Urban Yogis. He has done specialised work with children in the community around Croydon, south London, for 17 years as well as delivering projects in custody.
As part of Levelling the Playing Field’s focus on mental health, we asked him how the mental health of participants at both his organisations is supported and the current extent of the issues he is faced with.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many young people with complex mental health issues,” he said. “I think the impact of Covid, social isolation, cost of living and social media all play a part in the increase we’re seeing.
“All young people see is good-looking, successful people who appear to be really happy all the time. That’s not real life. It makes them lose confidence and self-esteem and sets unrealistic targets and expectations.”
Gloves Not Gunz uses boxing, martial arts and mentoring to engage local children on the fringes of criminality, school exclusion or going into care, while Urban Yogis uses yoga for similar purposes in the community as well as in custody.
Although the focus of both organisations is not solely on mental health outcomes, their staff are all trained in trauma-informed approaches and understand the effects of trauma on young people’s mental health. The organisations share a full-time family therapist and all staff deliver therapeutic interventions.
Last year, Ben and co-founder Adam Ballard introduced the AMBIT framework (Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment) which uses ‘mentalisation’ to enable delivery staff to understand and support young people who have multiple needs.
AMBIT is a tool that helps staff look at different aspects of each young person’s life – mental health, education, social, emotional, relationships etc – and monitor the success of the interventions across all these areas.
Each young person will also identify a particular goal – dealing better with anxiety and stress, for example – and the AMBIT framework will help to monitor progress towards achieving that goal.
“With any complex work there needs to be proper assessment, otherwise how do you know you’re making an impact?” states Ben.
“All of our supervisions help staff reflect on young people's behaviour and thought patterns and all the different systems in their life that affect them.”
Gloves Not Gunz and Urban Yogis also use AMBIT to monitor the mental health of staff. As Ben explains: “Staff are inhaling young people’s complex needs and trauma on a daily basis and are susceptible to vicarious trauma. We support them to carry that with them and avoid ‘compassion fatigue’ and burnout.”
The organisations’ in-house family therapist is Rory Campbell. It typically involves more complex one-to-one work with individuals referred through social care, youth offending services or education. When the time is right, they may be invited into group sessions in boxing, jiu-jitsu, yoga and personal development.
Despite the sophisticated support for their beneficiaries’ mental health and welfare, Ben believes it’s sport and physical activity that forms the bedrock of the organisations’ positive impact.
“Sport is the hook that enables us to build relationships with young people and engage them in positive activity,” he says. “Once that trust is established, you can start to unpick some of the issues that caused them to be referred into the service. If you sat down with them straight away and started talking about anger management and childhood trauma, they would disengage right away!
“We believe so much that mental and physical health go hand in hand. Our boxing, jiu jitsu and yoga are just as beneficial to our mentoring and therapy interventions and there is strong overlap.”
Boxing sessions, for example, will look at how to manage anger and conflict and then how to apply those lessons in the outside world. In custody, Urban Yogis teach techniques for dealing with difficult emotions. “We’re always looking at how situations in sport can help them elsewhere in life,” says Ben (pictured above).
He adds: “I’ve had counselling and found it really beneficial but the most beneficial thing in my life has been sport. Getting involved in something active is so healthy for mind and body. It builds resilience, allows them to express themselves and puts them in a better place to deal with their struggles.
“Once you get into a spiral, you constantly focus on the barrier that is affecting you, then you get de-motivated and it spreads in other areas of your life. Instead of it being something you can live with, it constantly holds you down.
“Sport can break that cycle. Once you start feeling better about yourself, they become more open to the suggestion of mentoring or therapy. It leads to better outcomes.
“Mental health services are really under pressure. They don’t have enough capacity to support the need, so I do think it’s time for organisations like ourselves to pick up that slack.”