About Buddy
Why Buddy?
2.6 million UK citizens currently have an open referral within mental health services. 560,000 of these are under the age of 18, 75% of whom aren’t receiving any treatment. Considering that 75% of mental health issues begin before the age of 18 and 50% before 14, the 420,000 kids that are being left without help, constitutes a national disgrace, particularly as this situation directly contributed to the more than 6,000 under 18’s suicides in 2017, to 1 in 4 girls self-harming and to a generation that feels increasingly abandoned and exiled.
Children wait more than 9000 days for help which is often delivered as safeguarding in a mental hospital costing £429 per night, waiting up to 3 months for treatment. The average stay is 2-3 weeks, costing circa £9,000 to the taxpayer, only to see 11,700 readmitted in weeks. So much wasted money but more importantly so many wasted lives.
With demand so far outstripping supply in public services, the young person and their family are often “encouraged” to seek private help as the only realistic alternative. But it’s very hard to locate and very costly.
Introducing Buddy
Commitment
To help alleviate current waiting times, matching those young people needing treatment with the best possible resource available in the shortest period-of-time, lowering fees all the way to zero by working in charitable partnerships and potentially with direct public and private sponsors. The objective is to work in partnership with the NHS to bridge the significant current resource gap, and to ensure that those discharged from mental health services remain under the support of appropriate professionals.
Responsibility
To help all those people with mental health issues in ways that deliver a meaningful and positive outcome that helps solve the burgeoning mental health crisis, so that they can go on to live healthy and happy lives, giving back to the society in which we live.
Support
An individual is dramatically influenced by their support system. buddy wants to surround those in need with a caring, inclusive support environment. This includes the launch of buddy life, the life coach wellbeing platform.
Preventus
Is the technology Company underpinning Buddy (and other organisations that seek to improve lives through innovative technology in the future) it is a hybrid where 20% of the equity will be held by investors, advisors and staff, and 80% operated as a trust. The primary function of the business is not to drive profit and shareholder return – but rather as a social enterprise to efficiently cover operational costs and investment needs to continue to enhance and add value to its platforms and capabilities to deliver social value. Profits will be used to re-invest, to gift as appropriate to good causes and to attract the very best people through appropriate incentivisation.