The Discovery Project

The Discovery Project works across the whole of Dorset alongside a wide variety of organisations from CAMHS, schools, charities, and other services to create an offer for Young People (13-25 year olds), their parents/carers and supporters.

We’re not a clinical intervention. We hope to support and empower young people by creating opportunities to explore an understanding of wellbeing, what this means, what matters, and how young people would like to see their mental health needs supported and voices heard.

We do this by sharing learning, having lived-experience expertise (peer specialists) alongside professional expertise (clinical trainers), co-producing and co-delivering a recovery-education based offer.

It’s provided by the Dorset Wellbeing and Recovery Partnership (WaRP), which is a partnership between Dorset Mental Health Forum (a local peer-led organisation) and Dorset HealthCare. The partnership, over the past 7 years, has been developing paid young person peer worker roles, approaches to co-production in CAMHS and Recovery Education.