Nurturing The Next Generation: The Mental Health Work In LCFC’s Academy

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Nurturing The Next Generation: The Mental Health Work In LCFC’s Academy

Industry-leading techniques and practices have been put in place at Leicester City’s Academy to help guide players on their journeys in football, supporting our young Foxes every step of the way.

2026-05-17T09:00+01:00

by Sam Jones

Published

17 May, 2026

Nurturing The Next Generation: The Mental Health Work In LCFC’s Academy

Industry-leading techniques and practices have been put in place at Leicester City’s Academy to help guide players on their journeys in football, supporting our young Foxes every step of the way.

Sam Jones

2026-05-17T09:00+01:00

Nurturing The Next Generation: The Mental Health Work In LCFC’s Academy

Industry-leading techniques and practices have been put in place at Leicester City’s Academy to help guide players on their journeys in football, supporting our young Foxes every step of the way.

Sam Jones

2026-05-17T09:00+01:00

Nurturing The Next Generation: The Mental Health Work In LCFC’s Academy

Industry-leading techniques and practices have been put in place at Leicester City’s Academy to help guide players on their journeys in football, supporting our young Foxes every step of the way.

Sam Jones

2026-05-17T09:00+01:00

Nurturing The Next Generation: The Mental Health Work In LCFC’s Academy

Industry-leading techniques and practices have been put in place at Leicester City’s Academy to help guide players on their journeys in football, supporting our young Foxes every step of the way.

Sam Jones

2026-05-17T09:00+01:00

Academy football is a challenging but rewarding sphere. The work often goes under the radar and is not seen by many, but from injuries to wellbeing and performance to psychology, it all forms part of the youngsters’ world as they move through the Academy pathway.

Here we shine a spotlight on those behind the scenes of the operation…

Dale Bradshaw, Men’s and Academy Safeguarding and Welfare Manager, is the longest serving staff member in the Mental Health Working Group, with over two decades of service dedicated to our Academy prospects.

Telling the story of how this space has evolved over the years, she has helped put the building blocks in place to get to where we are today in terms of the level of support offered. The changes in the outlook to mental health have been vital, she believes.

“I was a social worker before I came here, so I came with that mindset and applied it to football,” she started. “I was a lone voice. I'm female, which made it even more scary, I think, for them, not for me!

“I looked at the player more holistically, as opposed to just an athlete to perform and get points and a business model. Then, of course, we then had doctors coming in and the model started to change.”

Academy Doctor, Aseem Rahman, talked through the improvements made since the Mental Health Working Group formed four years ago.

“It was the first time that we'd probably all met together,” he began. “I think one of the problems we had was that there's lots of information going around the Academy, but we didn't all collate it somewhere.

“There are chats going down in the medical room, there are chats going on up here, there are chats in the coaches’ offices. When you retrospectively look at things, we had all of that information, but we just didn't bring it together.

“In this group, everyone came into their roles and I think it became a lot more embedded and now it's much more within the Academy atmosphere. People know about it and are aware of it and I think we've had some good successes.

“This model is relatively new, and it's been picked up and taken on by the Premier League around six months ago. Other Category One academies now have to have the exact same model that we do with player care, safeguarding, psychology and a doctor. That's been mandated now.”

Academy Psychologist Ben Walker discussed how the element of psychology relating to mental health has become interlinked with his main area of expertise, especially when on-pitch performance may be a result of off-the-pitch issues.

“We are largely performance psychologists but there's always the wellbeing and health side of it as well,” he stated. “I think that's really important for us. I've got a bit of background and experience in that.

“We try to straddle both, the performance side and on-pitch stuff, but try to bridge that gap into the off-pitch, more wellbeing holistic side.

“We’re acutely aware that some of these are just performance issues. Some players we might flag or look at them and know they might need a bit of support. Sometimes they're just struggling performance wise and that's okay as well.

“From a performance point of view, if lads are emotionally where they want to be, they've got a better chance of performing on the pitch. For us, we all want Leicester City to succeed.

“It's not just looking after them in here, it's actually helping them. It might be one or two per cent, but it might help them out there to get to where they want to get to. Definitely that wellbeing side affects performance, performance affects wellbeing and we need to be on both of those things.”

Fellow Academy Psychologist Roisin Kelly, who specialises in sport and performance psychology and has been at LCFC for the last six years, explained the complexities of their field and how the approach differs compared to other sports she has experience in.

“Every time you go into a sport, it's always a little bit different and there's always different demands to it,” she told us. “Football has its own demands. Where it probably changes is how the retained-released process is so demanding on the players.

“Regardless of how young the boys we have here are, they all want the career in football and a progression towards that. That’s one of the most specific demands to the sport.

“There are technical elements and tactical elements that are specific to the game, but just being in football is sometimes the hardest thing for our players.

“Where I certainly approach it differently is how are we looking at the holistic person. Part of you as a person is that you are a player. I try to centre my work around how we work with the person. And then how does that influence the player on the pitch?

“I think that needs to be part of psychology in football, especially for the older lads, but even the younger ones who are already saying: ‘I want to be a pro’. But you are 13, so what else is there to you as a person and what else do you like to do? And, if you didn't have football, what else would you be doing?”

Cleveland Taylor is the Head of Academy Player Care and Personal Development and a former professional himself who can therefore understand to a greater degree some of the issues that the youngsters face.

Players will often come to Cleveland as their first point of call. It’s important that he feels approachable and that they can trust him to help with any concerns which arise.

“Firstly, it's having a good relationship with the players,” he explained about his role. “If they've just had a game and their mood afterwards is different, it could be just solely on the game.

“It’s picking that up and knowing what information needs to be shared and what information they're telling me because they want that that support. It's being mindful of what they're sharing with me and how I go about it.

“That relationship is really important to knowing when someone just needs someone to be there, as opposed to actually needing help and support because sometimes they don't want to accept that they do.

“I’m fortunate, because we share an office, so within the working group it's confidential as well, but I can lean on Dale because with my playing career, sometimes I lean more towards football.

“Whereas sometimes Dale brings that human element and says: ‘did you look at it this way?’ and that's what helps me bring it to the mental health working group and then we all discuss it.

“That's the beauty of the working group, because I can relate to it, knowing the peaks and troughs of a season, the mental fatigue and where the players are at. You can see what's coming and it definitely helps having that insight of how they're feeling.

“But I can also bring it to a space that's confidential. That’s quite powerful because with so much experience in football, we can actually identify support for that individual, whether it's formal, informal, whether we just continue to be there, or we do some moving in the background that they're not aware of.”

Dale concurs, detailing the development of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) as another key element of progressing our mental health work forward, having support mechanisms in place and people that players can turn to easily and within a short distance, rather than travelling across the country to find help.

“Tracking back, another big support for me, and it wasn't localised at the time, was the PFA,” she explained. “I was a massive advocate of the PFA, who were very good. I can remember back to when I referred and there wasn't anybody that could help me.

“I was used to going to other agencies, from a social work point of view, as Aseem would be from a GP's point of view, and you would get those specialists in, but it was all in Manchester or London.

“When I was sending lads that needed support and counselling, you were having to then negotiate that they went on the train, that they were meeting somebody that we didn't know, they didn't know. And maybe they were really struggling, and I didn't like that.

“Since localising the services, we use it when we need to. If we need that support, you can get counselling within 24 hours.”

It’s not just the move into professional football which has to be considered, according to Dale. Those fresh into the Academy system must be monitored just as closely and have a familiar face to turn to from day one.

She continued: “We very much focus on the Professional Development Phase (PDP) phase, but in the younger age groups, we're just a listening ear, so if a younger player is struggling, often you'll pick things up from a performance and it's maybe being put under too much pressure around at home, so you can advise.

“Often parents will contact us as well if they're worried, which is a really good thing, and then we'd look at the support, the player liaison. Sometimes it comes in that way. The younger players, when they come up to the PDP, I've had them all as young lads anyway and the parents get used to you.

“Each phase has a psychologist, which is fantastic and such a good resource.”

Support can come from within, too. Ultimately looking to progress as individuals, Roisin believes the team environment created at every age level can be a really valuable part of the Academy system, offering support to each other and therefore having a positive impact on their mental health.

“You do play as a team, but they're not all going to make it as a team,” she explained. “You also want to excel and shine and promote yourself as much as possible. That can be really challenging as well.

“You want to be part of this group, but you are a little bit competing with the people around you. Most of them tend to talk quite well about being in a team, and I actually think that's a really beneficial bit of it, because I haven't gone through this experience, but their team-mates have.

“There's actually a strength to that and it being a positive in the mental health area, because all of your team-mates know what you're feeling right now.

“And we have wonderful staff who have been through the journey and they know what you feel right now. It can actually be a lot more supportive than being competitive or detrimental to wellbeing.”

Ben believes the range of expertise and knowledge across different areas is a key reason why they work so well.

“I think the real strength of this group and where it's got to is the diversity of it,” he added. “We've got all those different experiences: Dale's background in social services and being here a long time, Cleveland’s playing background, a doctor and GP background.

“It allows us to look at all these the challenges that players might be having or some of the pressures they might be facing from that holistic point of view and get a real balanced view on it.

“What's going on here for these players? How can we best help them? Who's best positioned to help them? That's a really good thing. I think players really value that and appreciate it.

“We've spent a bit of time in the past year trying to get a lot more of the Academy staff to understand what the mental health working group does, how it plays a role. They might not know everything - there's a lot of work we do in the background, but the staff trust us to be able to do that and support players as best as possible.”

Roisin agrees that having a setup at Leicester which has been in place for a long time allows all staff and players to understand the importance of the work of psychology and how to utilise it best.

She said: “Our mental health working group is a really powerful tool to go: ‘we think it's really significant that we actually have staff dedicated to monitoring the wellbeing of young players’.

“We have a group of people who are willing to advocate for a young person and will say what is important and relevant to the player, and they will be supported through that. I think that's huge.

“We have so many staff who fully accept that role and are on board. You might need to know what's going on, but we need you to get behind that, and a lot of our staff are happy to.

“If you look broadly at people's attitudes towards psychology and football, I think that has shifted. In the Academy, we are seeing a greater request for psychology. I think people are buying into it a little bit more and seeing the relevance.

“As a Category One academy, you have to have a fully qualified and registered psychologist, which means they have to be accredited and have their training, which is massively positive, because that's a huge step towards recognising the role of psych.

“We've always been lucky here that I joined when we already had two members of staff who really did a lot of groundwork and just being embedded around staff and psychology being a normal part of the conversation.

“When I came in and got to do part of that work, staff were already used to having us about and over time I think it's just grown more and more. We have great relationships with staff and maybe know how to use as a little bit better.”

An anterior cruciate ligament injury is one of the most brutal in football. Aseem must look at how that might impact the player mentally, not just when they get the injury, but also during recovery and return to play.

“Certainly, when we've had big injuries, this group has been fantastic,” Aseem commended. The classic one in football is an ACL. Everyone knows it's nine to 12 months out.

“For a young man who's developing football, personality, psychologically, that's a huge period of time being away from your peers, being away from what you love, being away from what you're really good at.

“We have to prepare them. When we give that information, I'll normally try and get Cleveland or Ben or Dale in, just because it's useful to have a couple of peers around.

“The closest thing in my professional life that I can equate it to is as a GP, you were taught how to deliver bad news and you don't try and overwhelm them with it. All they're hearing is ‘I've got a torn ACL’, for example.

“You just give them that, we give them some space and then we go in and give them some more. All of our experiences come together to hopefully give the players the best chance of getting to where they want to get to.

“With injuries, it might be that they're just down there, a lot of the rehab is quite solitary, just sat there on a game day. You might just go and have a chat with them, see how they're doing, get to know them as a person rather than just a footballer, as an athlete.

“I think the more that we've done that, it's become easier for the players to trust us as well, to realise that we're not just this necessarily. We're not going and feeding back to the coaches. They know that they can come and talk to us as people.”

Everyone has a role to play at different stages of the ACL recovery, through the whole journey of the nine to 12 months, to support the player in question.

“We’re quite strategic in the way that we work,” Cleveland added. We've had ACLs and other big injuries. It’s quite coordinated in that we (Aseem and Cleveland) will do the initial breaking of the news, Dale might have known them for 20 years so she would work in the background and speak to Mum, then Ben or Roisin would pick them up for their first chat after.

“It's actually quite nice when the boys say that don't know what we do, because that tells us what we're doing is good, because they can't see it. It just shows that it is seamless and within their every day.

“They only hear the one bit and just focus on wanting to play football again. But we understand that it's step by step, it's day by day, and some days they're going to feel great, some days they're not, and it's how we work in that way.

“From an ex-player’s point of view, the level of support and expertise that players get now is just all immersed and around them, when they don't even know. It’s amazing because of the quality of the staff and the professionals that they have working with them. At Leicester, it's pretty impressive.

“When I was playing, it wasn't to that standard. It was almost like the kitman was your go to. You'd sit in the kit room and say: ‘I'm not playing this weekend’. To look back and see, I might have even been a better player than I was!

“We're very fortunate that we're always there, always around in some way, shape or form. Ben might be out on the training ground, Aseem might be on the training pitch.

“There's a presence among the four of us across the training ground and across training, which is important because we're never far away, or if there's something that does happen, or there's an interaction, one of us is not far away, so we can observe the greater context.”

Dale recalled a particular example of a long-serving senior player who went through their own fitness battle before using his experience to help others going through similar difficulties at Academy level.

“I always remember Matty James, I knew him really well and he really struggled with injuries,” she recollected. “He'd have a really good period, then he'd be injured again, and you just felt for him. And they were big injuries.

“I found out, through going and sitting with him, all about his family, his partner, that he was learning to speak a language or play a musical instrument. And then we had an academy player that had the same injury.

“We were all at Belvoir Drive then, all in the same place, so I asked him if he would go and sit with him and talk to him about it. He did, and it really, really worked. It was really good. He was exceptionally good at that, and looking at things outside, because a lot of our players, even their hobbies are physical, which isn't good.

“When you've got a big injury like that and you can't perform your job, but you can't do your hobbies, that's where Cleveland and I come in and start projects.

“I've known players that have painted and fished. You get to know them and you explore other non-physical things with them. That can come through that process of a long injury, boredom and they just want to have a chat. They're a captive audience.

“We gather the feedback on how it went, what was important, because that's the learning. When you look back at the things and the information that was given, I'd listen to what Matty would tell me and then I would bring that to the group.

“He was given two weeks just to get himself away. That might not be something you can do with a younger player, but you'd talk through what was good for him, to evaluate what they've gone through.

“Those meetings that sometimes they probably thought they don't want to go to, they are so important in the rehabilitation.”

Ben explained the preventative nature of their work, knowing what could be coming down the line when it comes to longer term injuries.

He commented: “We have done similar things here in Seagrave as well with players who've got injured over this side and have gone to talk to First Team players. They're not quite as together but we still use them as a resource.

“I think some of those strategies speak to the two parts that this role can play. Specifically talking about injuries, we have an idea of what these players are going to face and experience and what the pressures are like from our expertise and experiences.

“We can put some of those strategies in place to try and prevent or help these players further down the line, so that they don't get to a place where we might need to refer out or access support for them.

“There's that preventative piece where we've got a player who's had an ACL and it’s how do we best support him over nine months so it doesn't get to that point where he really might be struggling.

“The second part of that is there are cases when players really struggle, and we do have to look further out for treatment and therapy.

“But this is not just about responding to players who are having real difficulty or challenges, it’s trying to prevent some of those things as well, which is a lot more of the hidden work, but I think it's almost as important, if not more important.”

Roisin added: “I work a lot with our injured players on just the role of mental health in that space. They can be out for a year and we're just able to have conversations around how this could impact mood and wellbeing and just how they’re feeling day-to-day. We can have a lot of conversations around that because those overlap so strongly as well.”

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