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Knowledge and Evidence

REPSSI's knowledge comes from the range of what it has built:

  • Delivering social and emotional learning in classrooms through storytelling, teaching young children self-regulation, empathy and cooperation

  • Training the mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) workforce through accredited certificates and diplomas that place qualified practitioners into schools, clinics, social services, and even prisons

  • Convening community dialogues that bring traditional leaders, parents and young people into the same conversation about mental health and stigma

  • Supporting parents and caregivers directly, including through digital tools

  • Connecting psychosocial support to economic strengthening, so that a young person's wellbeing and their livelihood advance together

  • Placing psychosocial care at the centre of humanitarian responses, where children live through displacement or natural disasters

A child's cupped hands hold a bowl shaped from brightly coloured play dough, at a play therapy session for young children in Zimbabwe
A REPSSI play therapy session for children aged 0 to 6 in Zimbabwe, where practice and evidence meet in a child's hands.

The flagship study

One approach stands out for the consistency of its results, and it is the one REPSSI is now turning into studied evidence. Across its countries, REPSSI places trained young people, close in age and experience to those they support, inside the health and community systems adolescents already use. Where they are present, young people stay in care and on treatment at rates the programme records year after year; where they are absent, young people are far more likely to start treatment and then stop.

The flagship is a three-year research project that articulates this model precisely, then pilots and tests it with academic partners, with REPSSI's staff and young people taking part as co-researchers rather than as subjects. The study places relational wellbeing (belonging, trust and recognition) at its centre, and asks whether the model works through the closeness of the peer group or through the way it connects young people outward to services and opportunity.

Working together

The Alliance would like to develop critical questions, design innovative research projects, and co-produce knowledge with partners through:

  • Writing opinion pieces together

  • Co-authoring for journals

  • Presenting jointly at the convenings where MHPSS experts gather

  • Collaborating with media practitioners to create documentaries, podcasts and photo exhibitions

  • Applying together for research funding, including routes such as Horizon Europe