What it means to wait: children's mental health support

2 million families in the UK are currently dealing with child mental health challenges. At a time where children’s mental health and emotional wellbeing are struggling, Orli Health wanted to hear directly from the people caring for or treating them. The Orli team wanted to build a technology and community-powered solution; one that could meet the real needs of those waiting for support from children’s mental health services.

Participants

131 people, including 61 parents/carers, 36 educators and 25 healthcare workers.

Methods

Online qualitative survey, free-text questions.

Impact

A powerful evidence-base of knowledge and experiences helping to de-risk and guide the development of an early-stage platform.

Delivered on behalf of:

What we did

Co-designed with lived and professional experience volunteers through 1:1 workshops and email correspondence to shape a multi-branched qualitative survey
Heard from over 130 people using predominantly open-ended questions to gain a nuanced and rich understanding of peoples’ experiences and views
Used AI-powered analysis to collate and summarise free-text responses to detail key insights for Orli's product development needs

Key insights

This research surfaced insights around potential improvements of children’s mental health services during the waiting period. The key themes were:

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1

Empowering parents with better resources and guidance

2

Enhancing training and support for educators and healthcare professionals

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3

Improving communication and co-ordination between services

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4

Increasing system capacity to reduce delays and improve accessibility

5

Promoting empathy and reducing stigma around seeking support

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Improvement in action

This research helped to reaffirm Orli’s commitment to tackling systemic barriers in children’s mental health. But most valuable of all, it uncovered opportunities for support during waiting periods that their digital solution should offer families, healthcare staff and the children affected.

The learnings from the rich narratives shared by those dealing with these mental health support challenges have guided the design and subsequent launch of Orli's MVP solutions; OrliSchools, OrliVerse and OrliFamily. Orli have subsequently secured private funding to further develop their solution.

"The process from start to finish was structured, seamless and well thought out. Each session delivered massive ROI for the time commitment given and when we thought it could not get any better, they delivered with an out-of-this-world proposal to help us share our results with the world. 10/10, would love to work with them again."

Dr Mark Cox

Co-founder and A&E Doctor

Orli Health

Outputs

Report

'Orli Insights 2025: Supporting Families Waiting for Children’s Mental Health Services'

View output ❯

Needing a quick, effective way of hearing from end-users to help de-risk and develop an early-stage health and care solution? Reach out for a chat today.