Rant Club provided a safe space for young parents to talk about their experiences and what life is like as a young parent. WILD worked with Trifle Gathering Productions, a theatre company that delivers community-based therapeutic work, to develop the innovative project, which reached 100 young parents across Cornwall.  

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The programme of mental wellbeing and suicide prevention support included: ​​

 

• Mental health groups for young parents. 

• Training and support on suicide prevention for agencies working with young parents. 

• Mental health crisis emergency plans. 

• Safety planning with individual parents, and ‘know the signs’ preventative work. 

• Mental health resources and information. 

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Facilitated by Trifle, Rant Club sessions gave WILD young parents a voice and empowered them to speak up and be heard so that their strong feelings were not left unresolved. The experiences captured in Rant Club were transformed into lyrics which were co-written by young parents and added to music written by Dom Coyote. 

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80% of Rant Club parents reported improved mental health and greater confidence in their ability to deal with stress since participating in Rant Club.

 

The reasons they gave for this improvement included the opportunity to talk about their feelings, learning to express strong emotions healthily and increased self-belief from contributing to the song. Young parents said, for the first time, they believed that they and their children deserve a better life. 

 

“Rant Club gave me a place to let off steam in a healthy way; to talk about my life, what I go through and what people say about me.” - WILD Young Parent

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Young parents are disproportionately affected by poor mental health. During the pandemic, sadly some young parents from Cornwall lost their lives to mental illness, and many more reported serious mental ill health. Research by WILD Young Parents found that 10% of new young parents had experienced mental health crises, and 22% used self-harm as a coping strategy.   

 

Research also shows that young parents are more likely to have faced childhood trauma and adversity which, left unresolved, is likely to cause poor mental health.

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“Parenting is universally recognised as being one of the toughest jobs in the world, yet young parents are often judged more harshly than others.  Young parents wanted to tell the world that they don’t deserve that judgement. They want people to know that young parents can be great parents too.

 

We hope the music video goes some way to changing some of the untrue narratives that exist about young parents. And we hope that people will begin to see young parents as we do – as heroes who are trying their very best and who are living with hope and ambition for their babies” - WILD CEO, Jo Davies

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Rant Club was funded by The Smiles Fund which is the result of a partnership between Comic Relief and Walkers to improve wellbeing and tackle disadvantage in the UK. 

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The Rant Club video was produced by Trifle Gathering Productions and Brett Harvey of O,Region​​​​​​