Who We Are
As Grow With Hope continues to develop and expand the organisation is currently run solely by the following board of directors who use their time, skills & experience with the aim to make a difference to young peoples mental health.
Riley Ashton (He/Him)
Founder & CEO
Riley is trained as a mental health first aider and is currently a uni student studying counselling and psychotherapy. He also volunteers with a number of charities awareness and the NHS to do what he can to reduce the suffering of others. This includes chairing Youth Voices - the under 25s mental health service user group in LSCFT where he works with young people, their carers and a range of mental health professionals and teams. His decision to create Grow With Hope came from his personal experience with mental health and experience within mental health services.
"Growing up was not easy and I experienced a lot of stress and trauma in my early childhood. I first started to really struggle with my mental health in my early teens, however, when I finally gained the courage to reach out for help my first encounter with mental health services wasn't a positive one. I was asked what could I possibly have to be sad about as people have it much worse than me. This was just the first of an extensive list of negative experiences I encountered which only made it even harder for me to open up and ask for help.
I also felt vey different to my peers growing up and it took me a long time to accept my gender identity as a trans man and sexuality. Eventually all my early experiences, mixed with my stress around my identity, as well as the extreme pressure I felt during my GCSEs, pushed me over the limit. I would go on to spend a number of years in and out of hospital being sectioned under the mental health act, with multiple suicide attempts, periods of depression, mania and psychosis.
Struggling to find stability and increasingly feeling like being diagnosed with a serious mental illness had become a life sentence, over time I became more and more hopeless. Although I met some amazing professionals who really did save my life and help me through some of my darkest moments, unfortunately I also experienced a number of traumatic experiences within inpatient settings which just made my mental health worse. After years with many ups and downs I started to get better and find stability, more importantly, I became hopeful and excited for the future.
Luckily, i'm still alive to talk about my journey but I have met many people who aren't and I know many more who are still in very dark places holding on for life.
The reason I chose the name Grow With Hope is because in the darkest moments of my life where I thought suicide was the only answer, was the moments I had lost all my hope. I never want a young person to become so hopeless that they believe suicide is the only answer too. Young people should be able to grow up full of hope and continue to live a life of hope throughout their entire lifespan. I wholeheartedly believe one day this will be possible, however, not enough is being done to educate young people how to take care of their mental health on a day-to-day basis and how to cope with any deterioration in their mental health.
Unfortunately, the current approach to mental health is very reactive so people are only receiving any sort of education and support once they have started struggling. Due to the limited resources, poor funding and long waiting lists this means most services are just firefighting people in crisis but it doesn't have to be this way. I wish myself and everyone else had been given education early on about mental health and how to take care of it because I believe I may not have got to the point where I thought suicide was the answer and where my friends felt the same leaving big dark holes in loved ones lives.
We already know there are certain risks for young people to go on to struggle with their mental health such as adverse childhood experiences, chronic stress, poverty, bullying etc. and yet there is a very limited amount of organisations and work being done to look at how to support these individuals early on before they begin to struggle and one way to do this is through education
- we are proud to be providing this education.
My message to you - Please know you are not alone and no matter how hopeless things have become ... even when you are certain things can't get better - There is ALWAYS hope."
Roz Bruno (She/Her)
Non-executive Director
Roz has plenty experience working with young people - previously as a teacher and then as an education officer for the charity Diversity Role Models delivering workshops for young people. She is now at uni studying to become a speech and language therapist.
"Working in schools I saw so many young people struggling with their mental health. Unfortunately, it still seems there is a stigma around being open about this. Many felt they couldn't speak up for fear of being judged, or perceived as ‘less than’ by their peers. Some could not recognise that what they were experiencing was mental distress. Mental health is like all other aspects of our health, and if we neglect it, problems will only persist and worsen. We as a society have to get better at de-stigmatising mental health issues and prioritising mental wellbeing. GWH’s mission is so important, we aim to give young people the tools to be better able to look after their mental wellbeing. For all my friends who are no longer with us- I'm hoping we don't lose any more"
Elisa Hari (She/Her)
Non-executive Director
Elisa has extensive experience working within a variety of roles in mental health care and within a variety of settings, she is currently working as the Quality and Practice RMN within a supported living organisation and also in private practice as an advanced psychotherapist.
"I became a director with Grow with Hope as their ethos comes from the founder’s lived experience of trying to feel heard as a young person going through tough times. He has created this charity from that place of wanting young people to have a place where they can feel heard, understood, and listened to without judgement. I have 30 years’ experience as a Registered Mental Health Nurse, and have recently qualified as an Advanced Psychotherapist Trainee after completing 4 years of training as an Integrative Humanistic Psychotherapist in Transactional Analysis. My hope is for a paradigm shift from asking, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘What’s happened to you.’ How we react to adverse experiences in life is not a diagnostic label, but a response to what has/is happening to us. Grow with Hope can offer support from those not only with professional mental health experience, but from our own lived experiences too. I too have experienced normal responses to adversity and wish I had had a place to grow with hope when I needed it. Being you isn’t easy for any of us sometimes and that’s ok- you can feel supported and heard with Grow with hope."
Rory Hemsted (He/Him)
Non-executive Director
Rory has a background in education and the charity sector, previously working for ReachOut, a charity delivering mentoring sessions for young people. He is now studying for a Master’s in Data Analytics and Social Statistics, with his research mainly focussed on the mental health and wellbeing of young people.