Above from left: Tessa Morgan, David Graham, Jack Smith, Taliah Drayak and Francesca Crozier-Roche at Cambridge

Taliah Drayak and Francesca Crozier-Roche are members of ATD Fourth World who have spent the past four years as experts-by-experience co-producing a major study about CAMHS Referrals and Outcomes for Adolescents and Children with Social Workers (COACHES). This collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Kingston University, King’s College London, the National Children’s Bureau, the British Association of Social Workers and the Care Leavers Association was based on an analysis of over 71,000 records and case notes.

Near Taliah’s home in Orkney, Scotland, she has also been working with a youth group connected to a local mental health charity. She shared with them some of the findings of COACHES, particularly the fact that systemic bias leads young people to be turned away from mental health services if their social living situation is considered to be “chaotic” or “unstable”–which can often be the case if they are living in poverty or if they are in the care system. Three of the teenagers in Taliah’s group then wrote poems about this, which are below.

I’m okay!

By J

You ask me if I’m doing okay.
I know the script
Okay.
Tired.
Just stressed.

Words that fit neatly
into the boxes
adults will expect.

Because I have learned
that honesty
doesn’t always feel safe.

Not because I want to lie,
but because truth
has a way of becoming
something that belongs
to everyone else.

A meeting.
A phone call.
A whispered conversation
outside the room
while I wait,
wondering
what will happen next.

You tell me
to trust you.

But trust feels different
when you’re the one
who gets to leave
with the keys.

I stay.

I stay with the thoughts
I trim into smaller shapes,
the nights I erase,
the sentences
I swallow halfway through
because I’m trying
to manage the damage
before it manages me.

You hear silence.

You don’t hear
the calculations.

If I say this…

Will they panic?

Will they stop listening
and start deciding?

Will I still belong
to my own story?

So I become
the editor of my brain,
crossing out
the sharpest edges,
making the storm
sound like just a little rain.

Not because
it isn’t hurting.

Because I’m scared
of what honesty
might cost.

People say,
“Reach out.”

As though reaching
isn’t hardest
when you’re convinced
your hand
will be taken
instead of held.

I need space
where my words
don’t become emergencies
before they become understood.

I need someone
who can sit
with the uncomfortable truth
without making me feel
like I’ve become
the problem.

I need to believe
that asking for help
won’t mean disappearing
behind decisions
made about me,
without me.

Maybe then
I would stop
measuring every sentence
before I speak.

Maybe then

“I need help”
wouldn’t feel
like opening a door
that only locks
from the outside.

Maybe then

you would finally hear
everything
I’ve been trying
so hard
to say
without saying it.

________________________

Maybe I’ll mistake surviving
for living.

By T

Every morning feels like borrowed,
Every evening ends the same.
Watching all my friends keep growing,
While I’m memorising pain.

They tell me not to blame myself,
But somehow I still do.
Maybe if I smiled more often,
I’d become worth helping too.

Maybe they’re just hoping
Time will change my name.
That I’ll slip into another service,
Someone else’s blame.

Maybe if they leave me long enough,
I’ll learn to ask for less.

Maybe I’ll mistake surviving
for living.
Maybe I’ll forget
I deserved more than this.

So hand me another prescription,
Write another note to file.
Measure out my life in waiting rooms,
And call it worthwhile.

________________________

Just smile and nod

By O

People ask me
how I am.
I think about answering,
but answering
isn’t a simple thing.
It arrives all at once,
like every radio
in the world
playing a different song,
and I don’t know
which one
I’m supposed to answer first.

Do I tell them
about my brother,
who has become
sadder than a forgotten birthday,
whose tear streaked face
has started to feel
like my new normal?
I talk with him
in our room sometimes.
Sometimes he answers qith quiet mouthed whispers.
Sometimes he justs curls up in silence.
I tell myself
both are answers.
I worry
because he says
he doesn’t want help.
I worry
because depression
is a very convincing liar.
It tells people
they are safer
alone.
I wish
he knew
that I would sit
in the silence with him
for as long
as it took.

Then there is my friend,
who laughs
a little less
every week.
The one who is trying
so hard
to become
themselves,
while home
keeps asking them
to become
someone else.
I wish
I could gather
all love and happiness
I feel about them,
wrap them in it
like a blanket,
and tell the world,
“This is who they are.
Please be gentle.

And you don’t know how

lucky you are to meet them.”

Instead,
I watch them
grow tired
of having
to explain
their own existence.
Some days
it feels
like the people I love
are standing
on separate islands,
calling for help,
and my arms
aren’t long enough
to reach them all.

Then there is me.
People think
mental health
lives inside
your thoughts.
Mine lives
deeper.
It settles
into my bones,
until lifting my body
feels like lifting
a house
that forgot
how to stand.

Some mornings,
gravity
wins.
Other mornings,
I do.
No one notices
how much courage
it takes
to get dressed
when your skeleton
is aching
from an invisible car crash.

I am autistic

and almost in contradiction

I have ADHD

That means
the world
arrives loudly.
Uncomfortably.
I hyper fixate on
Feelings
that don’t arrive
one at a time,
but all together,
like rain
finding every open window.

Yet, my memory is always

letting me down.

Making me feel

like pieces of me

are slipping through

my fingers.

It doesn’t mean
I don’t understand people.
Sometimes
I understand them
too much.
Sometimes
their sadness
sticks to me
like burrs
on a jumper,
and I carry it home
without realising.
I see someone
from CAMHS
sometimes.
I never quite know
when “sometimes”
will be again.
I wonder
if they are helping.

Still…
I am grateful.
Grateful
that someone
finally gave
a name
to the way
my mind works.
Because names
can become maps.
And maps
don’t erase
the mountains,
but they remind you
there is a path.
The tablets help.
Not perfectly.
Not magically.
But enough
that the days
are no longer
all the same colour.
Enough
that sometimes
I remember
what light
looks like.
People say
I am strong.
I don’t feel strong.
I feel
like a person
carrying
too many fragile things
through a storm,
trying desperately
not to drop
any of them.
I keep going.
For my brother.
For my friend.
For the version of me
whose bones
did not always hurt.
And for the small,
stubborn hope
that one day,
all of us
will discover
that surviving
was never
the whole story.