Listening to children and young people's exerience of health and social care
Download (PDF 6.53 MB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Wiltshire created this 'Listening to Children and Young People: Your Experience of Health and Social Care' report to find out what children and young people living in Wiltshire felt about using health and care services.
Working with Youth Action Wiltshire and Community First’s Community Organisers, Healthwatch Wiltshire trained a group of 10 young people (aged 16 – 18) to become Young Listeners, who carried out training in listening skills, community organising skills and safeguarding and were supported to carry out 'listenings' with other children and young people. These Young Listeners worked together to develop questions that they would ask, focusing on 3 areas:
Young Carers
Children and young people with Special Educational Needs (SEND)
Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health
They collected views and experiences from 174 children and young people, including 74 young carers and 48 childrend and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
Key findings included:
Children and young people want to be seen as individuals and treated with respect.
Many young people felt that the waiting time for an appointment after being referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) was too long.
Young people felt that they weren’t being listened to and said that they found it unhelpful seeing different mental health professionals each time.
Some young people said that they did not know where to go for advice on either physical health or mental health in schools.
The report also makes mention of what the plans are in the future for the Young Listeners.