About us
The Child, Adolescent and Parent Mental Health (CHAMP) group is a research group within the School of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. We investigate the causes, consequences and prevention of mental health problems in children, young people and families, combining large-scale longitudinal studies, school-based programmes and creative community engagement to drive meaningful change.
What we do
Longitudinal research
We run and collaborate on large birth cohort studies, including WCHADS, tracking families from pregnancy through adolescence to understand how mental health develops over time.
School & community programmes
Our School Wellbeing Project embeds MMU psychology students in Greater Manchester primary schools, delivering preventative emotional health support at no cost to schools.
Family & public engagement
We work alongside children, young people, parents and carers as active partners in designing, delivering and shaping our research. Not just as participants.
Our impact
1 million
moments of real family life captured with headcams
1,780+
primary pupils reached across, Greater Manchester primary schools via our Student Wellbeing Project
27
schools across Greater Manchester, delivered three times a year, free of charge to schools
1,233
mother-child dyads in WCHADS, tracked from pregnancy through to age 16 in the Wirral
100+
MMU students trained & deployed, undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students gaining real-world experience
A global perspective
Our work extends well beyond Manchester. We collaborate with research partners in Brazil, Chile, India, Norway and Canada, running parallel studies that allow us to examine how culture, context and social inequality shape child and parent mental health across the world.
Our funders
Our research is made possible through the generous support of the following organisations. We are grateful to all our funders and partners for enabling work that makes a lasting difference to children and families.
European Research Council
Funding our programme of research into parent-child interactions using wearable cameras, advanced AI-based emotional analysis, and novel methods to identify relational signatures protective of child mental health.
Brazilian National Research Funds
Co-funding the 2019 Rio Grande Birth Cohort and our wearable camera sub-study in Latin America, enabling cross-cultural comparison alongside our ERC-funded UK work.
MMU ENGAGE Fund
Supporting our public and patient involvement projects, including research into school attendance difficulties and the intergenerational impact of endometriosis, ensuring lived experience shapes our research.
We also draw on data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and work in close partnership with the University of Liverpool on WCHADS.
Join our research community
Whether you’re a researcher, school, family or funder, there are many ways to get involved with CHAMP’s work.