MyST – Regional Community Model

MyST, My Support Team, formerly known as MIST, began in the Gwent LA borough of Torfaen in 2004. Formed as a multi-agency partnership, at that time following the strategic direction of National Mental health policy, Everybody’s Business and the local CAMHS strategic planning group. Its task was to be innovative and create a local, community based mental health service for children and young people with complex mental health needs who would normally have to live away from their local community in specialist provisions such as residential care, hospital, or secure settings. MIST was initially developed in 2 local authority areas but since 2019, it has evolved into a Regional Partnership Service, covering all the 5 local authority areas which make up the Gwent local authority footprint and the Aneurin Beavan University Health Board.

MyST continues to be at its core, a value based, relational model of community care, co-creating enabling environments that promote inclusion, involvement, a sense of belonging and agency, a culture of enquiry, openness, and a quality of safety for all.

MyST Model

MyST is an intensive mental health service for children, young people and their carers/families involved in children’s social care. Predominately, but not exclusively, our young people are looked after by their local authority area or have extensive involvement from children’s social care, which is aiming to try to prevent an escalation in their care pathways or to prevent a breakdown in their family. We care for young people from the age of 4 up to 16 at the time that they become involved with our service, and we can continue up to the age of 18, often providing continuity of relationships and care over the longer term.

Our young people have been identified as having complex mental health needs, that span all the domains of their lives, such as:

• Instability in core attachments and as such their stability is affected in their home lives, in their school/education, in their family relationships and friendships.
• Difficulties in Education and learning, with exclusion and disengagement from these opportunities present.
• Troubling and harmful behaviours to self, others or both, with a frequency and severity that makes stability and security of attachment relationships hard to achieve.
• Significant developmental difficulties arising from their experiences of trauma.