Co-designing a new mental health service for young people

Content warning: this page talks about a service for children and young people who have attempted suicide, have suicidal thoughts or have self-harmed.

Child and Youth Hospital Outreach Post-suicidal Engagement (CY-HOPE) is a dedicated youth suicide prevention and post-suicidal support service. I partnered with service designers and clinical specialists at the Victorian Department of Health in Australia to co-design the CY-HOPE service with children, young people and caregivers. We alao developed a practical co-design toolkit to help other clinicians and healthcare staff evolve and expand the service in the future without our support.


A screenshot of a page from a presentation with a quote from a lived experience participant who took part in the co-design workshops.

Credit: Portable

Top skills

Writing for children

Designed accessible, age-appropriate research communications, such as surveys, workshop guides and research worksheets for children, young people, and caregivers who were taking part in the project.

Service blueprinting and capability coaching

Guided 4 healthcare services across a 6-month period in co-design best practices as they facilitated the design workshops. Then worked with those healthcare services to map out the first CY-HOPE service blueprint.

Creating a research and design toolkit

Created content for an online research and design toolkit, giving clinical staff the practical guides, facilitation skills, and safety protocols so that they could run ethical research and design workshops without our support.