Listening to children and young people report

Healthwatch Wiltshire created a report on their Young Listeners project, where they recruited a team of young people and gave them training and the skills to carry out "listenings" with their peers to hear their views of health and wellbeing support within their school. The project ran from June 2017 until January 2018.

This programme came about because in 2016, Healthwatch Wiltshire published the report "Listening to Children and Young People: Your Experience of Health and Social Care". Working with Youth Action Wiltshire and Community First’s Community Organisers, a team of young people were trained in safeguarding, communication and listening skills. They listened to other children and young people at youth groups to hear their experiences of using health and care services. A key theme that arose from this was that young people didn’t know where to access support for physical or mental health in schools. Healthwatch Wiltshire felt that further work should be carried out looking at this in more detail.

18 students aged 12 - 14 from four schools were recruited and attended 5 weeks of training, as well as a weekend residential course, learning skills and making plans on how to engage students at their schools. Following this training, the young people carried out one-to-one "listenings", group "listenings" and anonymous surveys. In total they held a total of 156 "listenings" across four schools. In total, the young listeners gave 999 hours of their time to the project.

The key messages were:

- Young people felt that it was important for them to have opportunities to discuss mental health and wellbeing.

- Young people said that they wanted support for health and wellbeing in school to be more accessible.

- Young people said that they wanted to be able to talk about health and wellbeing issues without judgement and be respected.

- Young people said that they welcomed having the opportunity to share their views with their peers.

Four recommendations are made in the report:

1. More opportunities are given to young people to discuss mental health and wellbeing in school, for example in assemblies, PSHE lessons and involvement in national campaigns.

2. All schools continue to provide mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people, and promote this widely.

3. More training is provided for all school staff around mental health and wellbeing awareness, and the support that is available locally so that they can signpost.

4. The peer to peer approach used by the Young Listeners is promoted and fostered within schools.