Following a year-long series of projects the NHS England Youth Forum have released reports and resources which encompass their drive to address the issues young people face in healthcare. The reports and resources focus on trans and non-binary rights in healthcare, health inequalities and the experiences of young people with special educational needs and disabilities or long term conditions in educational settings.
Speaking on behalf of the NHS England Youth Forum, Haris Sultan said: “Working collectively with so many passionate young people across the country despite COVID-19 to produce these resources and reports has been so rewarding. The work we’ve been able to produce is direct evidence that when you include young people’s voices at the heart of important and pressing issues, we will not only highlight the issues but find the solutions too.
“We’ve been able to produce three reports on vital issues such as trans and non-binary rights in healthcare, health inequalities for minority ethnic communities and medical education and the experiences of children and young people with special educational needs and/or long-term conditions.
“Young people and professionals working in a healthcare environment now have a set of resources that will lead to young people to having much better experiences and will shape the health system of tomorrow”
The NHS England Youth Forum is made up of 25 young people from across England. The Forum is delivered by the British Youth Council and works in partnership with NHS England to challenge and feed in ideas and solutions regarding health care and services. The British Youth Council established the NHS England Youth Forum in 2014 believing professionals in healthcare could and should do things differently to engage young people in the NHS and to amplify the voice of 15 million under 20-year-olds across England.
Please take a look at the report here and share this within your networks.
The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Long Term Conditions (LTC) NHS Youth Forum work stream have launched their report on how young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and/or Long Term Conditions experience education.
Over the last year, members of the NHS Youth Forum have been working in groups to improve health and social care services for young people in certain areas, one of which was targeted at young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and/or Long Term Conditions.
The report is a reflection of young people’s views of their time in education and informs educators of the preferences children and young people have in an educational setting.
The report has gathered the views of children and young people aged 11-25 years old through a feedback form which addressed two broad questions: ‘when I attend my educational setting I feel…’ and ‘I would like my teachers to know…’.
The aim of asking these questions was to ensure that the group had a full understanding of what that would improve the experience of young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities or Long Term Conditions in education, and that we would be able to translate this into a guide for educators to best support those young people.
You can also find an accessible video version of the report here:
If you would like this report to be produced in a format that can be read by a screen reader, please get in contact with us at NHSYouthForum@byc.org.uk
Members of the NHS Youth Forum got together with Dr Peter Green from the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Children (NNDHP) to create a report for the United Nations Committee for the Rights of a Child.
After being consulted by the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Children on their report: ‘Health thematic for consideration prior to the review of the UK by the UN committee for the rights of a child’, the Youth Forum wrote their own report for consideration by the UN committee for the rights of a child that addressed the concerns and views of the NHS Youth Forum.
This report looks at the five issues outlined in the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Children report, as well as a further issue young people thought to be prevalent. These issues are:
• Infant mortality, Maternal death in childbirth and Adolescent Mortality
• Malnutrition
• Looked after children
• Child poverty + UN sustainable development goals
• Promotion of health and wellbeing
• Gender identity
The report was co-led by Haris Sultan and Sonia Beard, with writers, Ray Everall and Emma Beeden, and illustrated by Beci Ward.
You can read the full report here.
Within the uncertainty of our Coronavirus world lies one absolute guarantee: our society will change. As chair of the British Youth Council and someone doing their best to guide a charity through a global pandemic, I fully appreciate how erratic our daily lives have become. The disorientating speed at which we all have to make decisions, and process news contrasts with being unable to socialise or spend time outside, makes everyday feel like a year, with weeks dragging or flying by. So whilst I do not envy the scale and pace that Government decision makers have to compete with, I know I am not alone in becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of public discussion or focus on how Coronavirus, or specifically COVID-19 will impact young people. Frankly, it is woeful that the generation who will have to endure the economic and social consequences of COVID-19 for the longest have not been consulted or focused on in any top level conversations. Taking three, simple steps could prove to be the fundamental changes needed to ensure that we are all embracing the fact that now, more than ever, young people matter.
Firstly, we desperately need someone to provide focused leadership on how we ensure children and young people (or ‘Generation COVID’) are not left behind when we face our new normal. Each day that schools remain closed, inequality between children widens, and the longer we are rightly following the social distancing rules, the more pronounced the mental health implications could become. An urgent, assured way to address these issues is to appoint a youth minister. We need someone responsible for bringing together experts across all departments and sectors. We need someone to plan how we safeguard the last ten years of social mobility progression. This new, point person would ensure that our plan for returning to education is complemented with research and action, and that we understand how social distancing affects our mental health.
Secondly, now is the time for the Government to be brave and elevate young voices, rather than perpetuating the archaic idea that children ‘should be seen, and not heard.’ This would mean throwing open the doors to young people full of urgent questions and ideas. However, barriers still exist with daily press conferences restricting public questions to over 18’s only. We should unashamedly follow in the footsteps of other world leaders who have specifically held youth press conferences. By empowering young people across the UK to vocalise their concerns, it would give ministers a valuable insight into the mindset of generations who will be burdened by our Coronavirus response. Other institutions, such as the Bank of England, are tackling the pandemic with young people at the forefront, and I highly suspect they will come out of this stronger. For example, the British Youth Council recently partnered with the Bank of England to establish the Bank of England Youth Forum. Members of the forum are currently gathering the financial concerns and questions of young people to put these to the Chief Economist, Andy Haldane.
Lastly, the sooner we all embrace the fact that the ‘pre-COVID’ priorities of younger generations are not going away, the sooner we can start to work across generations to find ways of embedding them into our collective exit strategy. How can we ensure our economy is supported and secure jobs are prioritised? How can we incorporate the environmental targets we cannot afford to drop? When the future of work looks grim for the under 30s, how can society collectively alleviate the concerns of the younger generations, who are often in precarious employment? Many politicians have admitted that our society will not be the same again, so let us try and work towards a society where the overwhelming priorities of the under 30s – such as tackling the climate crisis, and addressing the socio-economic factors that lead to knife crime – are built into the fabric of the new, (hopefully) post-COVID 19 society.
So far, it is apparent that the Government is dealing with the current health crisis as it develops, and the postmortem on how well or not they did this appears to be starting. Yet, I fear our policy makers are already behind in recognising how severe this global pandemic is going to impact the next generations; if we do not start to embed the voices of young people into our decision making structures now, we will be worse off sooner rather than later.
Across the UK there is a fantastic youth social action network, this network can be in a variety of forms but I have personally experienced this in a number of different settings.
I have been a member of the NHS England Youth Forum which is an awesome network for making positive change from the point of view of young people who let’s face it are going to be using the NHS for years to come.
The NHS England Youth Forum has been able to positively make a difference in a number of different ways over the 12 to 18 months, through 3 campaigns ‘Share your NHS Story’; ‘Peer Support’ & ‘Educating the Educators’.
For myself, the ‘Share your NHS Story’ campaign has had the most impact within my local area because I have been able to influence positive change by encouraging young people to speak out about there NHS Story if they have one & have felt confident enough to share it with there peer group.
I have also been able to see a positive change in the way that young people are listened to by key decision makers not just within my home town of Hereford but also now on a national level through my work with the NHS England Youth Forum & Youth Advisory Panel at the Sport & Recreation Alliance.
When I launched The Young Person’s Network in 2017 my vision was to enable all children & young people in Herefordshire to be heard if they are aged between 11-18 and have a disability or additional need. 2 years on I think it is safe to say that decision makers in my county are effectively listening to marginalised young people.
I know this is happening is a positive way because my network managed to get 2 pavements lowered in a rural area of the county for a young person who is a wheelchair user and wanted to go out independently with friends.
She wasn’t able to before this change because of the lack of dropped kerbs in her local town so I was contacted about this issue and then liaised with key decision makers to influence this much needed change.
More recently I have worked with a group of young people to highlight the lack of dropped kerbs for those who are either in wheelchairs or have mobility issues. After months of high profiled campaigning, we have now had such an impact on key decision makers that more dropped kerbs are going to be added to roads where they are needed in Herefordshire.
To conclude: without young people speaking out and being heard by people in power across a number of organisations locally, regionally & nationally we wouldn’t have made a positive impact on the lives of generations to come, this is why since getting involved with the NHS England Youth Forum & SRA Youth Advisory Panel I have developed a serious passion for youth social action in the UK. Don’t be afraid to speak out & be heard.