Youth Health and Well-Being in Leeds

Transcription

1 Meeting Notes Wednesday 17 th September pm Present: Harriet (Healthwatch Leeds worker), Craig (Healthwatch Leeds worker), Rhianna, Sharon, Claire, Sammy, Rosie, Shanjida, Jevante, Mohammed, Tanika, Liv. Apologies: Gurdesh, James, Tash, Denver, Ashley Updates Jevante told the group about the #SELFIE event she was involved in helping to organise. The event was run by Black Health Initiative (BHI) and was particularly for young people from minority ethnic groups. There were speakers and workshops about self-esteem and emotional health. Claire, Mohammed, Harriet and Sharon ran a stall at the event. They told people about YouthWatch and did the school nurse survey. Harriet said it was inspiring to see that young people had planned and ran the whole event. Sharon, Aliane and Steven went to the second hack day event in August. This was a follow up to an event in June when young people worked with web designers to look at the content for a new emotional health and wellbeing website for young people in Leeds. Sharon said that YouthWatch volunteers were involved in interviewing the web designers that were competing to get the job of designing the website. As a result of the event, two web designers have been shortlisted and are going to be invited to run a workshop for young people on 2 nd October. See Future Activities on page 6 for more information. 1

2 Rosie and Hanna are the YouthWatch representatives on the Healthwatch Leeds Board. Harriet explained that the Board is the group of people that oversees the work of Healthwatch Leeds and helps steer our work in the right direction. One of the Board s priorities is involvement of children and young people. Rosie said that the Board are looking at setting up a group that looks at how Healthwatch Leeds can be more inclusive and accessible to different groups of people. Rosie, Mohammed and Claire helped out at a stall at Leeds City College Freshers Fair. They talked to young people about volunteering with Healthwatch and did some school nurse drop in surveys. Harriet gave feedback on the quick poll that we did at our last meeting: How should we record our meetings? 10 people completed the poll, and the top three ways that people thought we could reach the widest number of young people were: notes to YouthWatch Mailing List as a word document Set up a facebook group and put notes of meetings and photos on there Blog about YouthWatch meetings - to be done by a different YouthWatch member each meeting We will be sharing notes of our meetings in these ways in the future. We will hopefully be running some blogging training before Christmas so that volunteers can get the skills they need to start writing blogs. Harriet showed the group the notes of the last meeting. She explained how we are trying to make 2

3 them easier to read by using shorter sentences, pictures and larger text. Craig said that we have set up a group for YouthWatch Volunteers on facebook. It is where we ll post the notes from our meetings. This is a private group where only people who are members can see each other s posts. If you want to talk to other YouthWatch volunteers about anything this is a good place to do it. Also we will be regularly posting volunteering opportunities you can get involved with. If you haven t accepted our invitation to join the group, please do so. Harriet gave an update on the school nurse survey which YouthWatch is doing to help school nurses design a health drop in in high schools. We have done about 250 surveys so far. Ideally we want to get at least 300 surveys done (this is the magic number which is generally recognised for people to take bits of research seriously). Shanjida and Liv said they can help by doing the survey with young people at their school or college. The deadline for doing the survey is 30 th September. We ve met with the school nurses and they re really happy with the work we re doing and want to pass on their thanks to everyone who has helped with the survey. They also told us that the school nursing service is being reviewed. This may mean that there is a delay of about 4 months in moving forward with what we find out from the survey. Quick Review of Breeze on tour events Craig explained that we want to see what YouthWatch volunteers thought about the Breeze events. We will use this feedback to help us plan any future events. As a 3

4 group we discussed: What worked well? What didn t work well? How could we do things better next time? What worked well? Working with Young Minds The bus was good for a break/shelter when it rained and helped us stand out The Draw, write and doodle activity was popular and good as a starting point to get children talking about their experiences The balloons and facepainting were good it helped get the word out there about YouthWatch We were able to talk to parents and young people who were queueing for facepainting Highlighters and loom bands were popular What didn t work well? The Wifi connection wasn t very reliable when trying to do the school nurse survey on ipads. There was so much other stuff going on that people didn t really go on the bus to look at the Doc Ready display and demonstration. We didn t really use the inside of the bus to its full potential. Gazebos were difficult to put up! How could we do it better next time? The smoothie people could be there for longer We d like to do it again but maybe do less events or scale it down a bit. The Healthwatch Leeds staff team will also be reviewing how Breeze, went and we will feed your views into this discussion. 4

5 What issues should YouthWatch be looking at? Harriet explained that YouthWatch is set up, we need to have a plan about what issues we are going to look at in the coming year. There are lots of issues for children and young people around health and social care services. We can t look at all the issues so we need to choose three to look at in the next year. Harriet went through some issues that we found out from talking to young people and groups, and from other consultations that have been done. Harriet asked people if they thought that we had missed any important issues. No-one had any issues. People split into groups put the issues in order of what they thought was most important and least important. After each group had finished putting the issues in order, we scored each issue. The top 6 priorities were: Treatment of young parents by doctors and social workers is often mixed. They sometimes feel they have been judged and not treated fairly. Young people are not getting the support they need unless they re seriously unwell. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are only available for those that are very unwell. Some young people are scared to complain about a service. Young people feel like there is too much change, not enough continuity and lack of information about the move from children s services to adult services. Young people, especially those with learning disabilities sometimes feel left out of conversations with professionals. 5

6 Future Activities They can feel like professionals are talking about them to parents/carers, rather than to them. Some young people with learning disabilities don't understand letters that are sent to them by doctors/ hospitals. They have to ask someone else to translate it which means they can't be independent as they d like to be. The group agreed to put a quick poll online to give people a chance to vote who weren t at the meeting. It was agreed that any young person aged who lives in Leeds can vote. We will add up the scores we got from the meeting with those who vote online. The poll will be open for one week. Once we have our three priorities, we will need to have a look at any work that is going on locally or nationally about the issues. Rosie has volunteered to research this. Craig told the group about some activities coming up that people might want to be involved in. If you weren t able to come to the meeting, please craig@healthwatchleeds.co.uk if you d like to be involved in any of these: Weds 1 st October pm YouthWatch stall at Leeds Beckett University (Leeds Met) Freshers Fair (City Centre campus) we need 2 volunteers for this to talk to students about YouthWatch and volunteering with us. Rosie, Sharon, Sammy and Denver have signed up for this. Thurs 2 nd October pm Web Design Follow up day at The NHS Leadership Academy, 3 The Embankment, Sovereign Street, Leeds, LS1 4GP. Opportunity to be involved in helping to design a website for young people in Leeds about emotional health and wellbeing. This workshop will be run by two potential web designers who might design the web site. You will take part and then 6

7 Anything Else? mark what you think of the workshop and how it was run. Aliane, Sharon, Ashley, Tash and Sammy have signed up to this. Friday 10 th October 10.30am-3pm Healthwatch stall at World Mental Day event at Leeds Civic Hall, Calverley St, LS1 1UR, Leeds. We ll be asking people about their experiences of health and social care services and telling them about Healthwatch. Tanika, Sharon, Ashley, Tash, Rhianna, Shanjida, Mohammed and Sammy signed up for this Weds 28 th October 9.45am-3pm YouthWatch stall at Leeds University Freshers Fair, Parkinson Court we need 2 volunteers for this to talk to people about YouthWatch and volunteering with us. Healthwatcher training and Healthwatch Induction Training - 5 th November 10am-4pm. Shanjida and Sammy have signed up for this. Enter and View Training Tues 25 th November 10am- 3pm. Jevante (possible), Sharon, Shanjida and Sammy signed up for this. Making office displays date to be confirmed. We re looking for some people to help us make a display out of some of the photos of children s pictures we took at the Draw, Write and Doodle activities we ran at Breeze. Sharon, Sammy, Tankia and Liv signed up for this. Healthwatch Sheffield have asked Harriet if two of their workers and one or two young people could come to a YouthWatch meeting. They are thinking of setting up a young people s group in Sheffield and want to come and see what we do. Harriet asked if everyone would be OK with this. Everyone is fine with them coming. Date of next YouthWatch meeting: Weds 22 nd October 4-6pm at the Market Place 7