Think Ahead turns 10 years old

“It began with a spark of an idea to make the social, economic and environmental factors affecting people’s mental health the bedrock of training for careers in the sector. From that spark grew the highly regarded organisation that Think Ahead is today.”

Those are the words of our Chief Executive, Philippa Mariani, about Think Ahead’s journey over the last 10 years, since the organisation was founded in 2014.

In that time, 1,000 people have joined us to train as mental health social workers. Each one is passionately committed to supporting people with mental health needs. That’s not always easy, but we’re proud to say that over 80% of our trainees are still working in mental health services three years after qualifying.

Sharing our stories

To mark the occasion, we have published a series of stories that trace our journey from the start of the organisation until today. The personal testimonies are from  people involved across our organisation  – from alumni and trainees, to members of our Lived Experience Partnership, and our NHS and social care partners.

Read our stories and discover what we’ve achieved 

Looking ahead

We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved over the last ten years – but we know there is lots more to do. We are committed to supporting and developing the mental health workforce beyond social workers.

Mental health practitioners across many professions are incredible people. They provide vital support to people when they need it most. But they need support too. Our recent manifesto sets out our thinking on this, and our call to grow, invest in and connect the workforce.

Over the last 10 years we have built up an enormous amount of expertise on recruiting, training and supporting mental health social workers, and we are keen to use this expertise more widely in the workforce. For examples of how we’re already doing that, you can read about our work on mental health and employment, and strengthening drug and alcohol services.

If you’d like to work with us to better support the mental health workforce – please get in touch, by emailing hello@thinkahead.org.

Thanking our partners

It’s an important time to say thank you to some of our key partners and the people who’ve helped Think Ahead grow into the organisation it is today – and so we also held an event to do just this. Although there are far too many to thank everyone individually, we paid tribute to:

• Department of Health and Social Care – with their partnership and drive for continuous development we’ve been able to shine such a light on what is often an under recognised, underestimated and undervalued part of the mental health workforce.
• Middlesex University – our academic partner since 2019, who have been integral to the success of our programme and the robust training of all our social workers.
• Our NHS trusts and local authority partners – who provide the on-the-job learning for our trainees and give them the grounding in good practice right from the word go.
• Members of our Lived Experience Partnership – who have been a key part of the organisation since it was founded and whose voices underpin everything that we do.
• And many more!

Thanking our Chair of Trustees

We also said a huge thank you to our founding chair, Professor Dame Carol Black GBE, who has been a leading light to our organisation since the beginning. Carol spoke at the event, thinking back to when the organisation was initially set up by Norman Lamb, who was the Liberal Democrat Minister for Care and Support at the time.

Carol said: “We wanted mental health social work to be [seen as] more important… it’s so vital to so many people’s lives, so we hoped we were giving it more kudos, more visibility and more impact.

“Chairing Think Ahead has been an absolute joy… we’ve grown very quietly, but we’ve grown very surely and we’ve learnt as we’ve gone along.”

Hearing from our alumni

At our event we also heard from Levi Chambers-Cook, who was a member of our very first intake of trainees in 2016, and is now a member of our Board of Trustees, and still a mental health social worker in Manchester.

Levi talked about her journey with Think Ahead, and about the value of social workers: “I truly believe that social work plays a pivotal role in mental health support, and integrated services more broadly.

“Social work takes up a unique position which is sometimes overlooked by the wider health service, but at it’s core we are focused on advocating for vulnerable people by helping individuals navigate an array of social challenges…. We are vital.”