Feature

We know what we are talking about

Too often children are seen and not heard, but here young reporters from the Children’s Express news agency in Newcastle give their impressions of a recent conference on inequalities in young people’s health

If you want health services for young people to be accessible then you must consult them right from the outset. That was the clear message from young people involved in a one-day conference in York about tackling inequalities in young people’s health provision.

Organised by the Young People’s Health Network (part of the Health Education Authority), the conference attracted more than 175 delegates, most of whom were professionals working with young people in some way. There was a significant, but small contingent of young people there too who managed to get their voice heard.

‘Young people should be involved from the beginning, so you are getting the young people’s ideas before you even start actually doing your project, so you’ve got their ideas, their thoughts and you are doing it their way so they can understand it. You are getting a young point of view,’ said 16-year-old Emma Hullah during a panel session at the end of the conference. It was a point echoed many times by other young people there.

The panel session involved the young people who had led workshops pooling what they thought were the main issues. They then posed these questions to ‘experts’, who in turn got a chance to put questions to the panel.

Phillip Kitson, a member of a young people’s health project run by and for young people, wanted to know from the professionals how they involved young people in planning, designing and delivering health services.

Just one delegate said they were working towards involving young people in the planning and delivery of services, through a youth forum and a Community Health Council ‘health watch panel’ which would involve young people over the age of 16.

Another question directed at the professionals argued that the money spent on hospitals and doctors was too late. ‘Young people need casual drop-ins, advice centres, counselling or information, youth workers, so they can talk about problems before they actually become serious or really bad.’ So why wasn’t more money spent earlier on providing young people with preventative services, the panellist asked.

While agreeing with the argument, delegates said their hands were tied. A social worker spoke of their legal responsibilities to meet certain needs, and the difficulty of trying to balance that against the pressing need for preventative work.

‘If you think about how social workers are harassed in the press when they are not doing something that they are meant to be doing by law, you can understand their fear and the politicians’ fears about taking money from that side of the service and putting it where we all know it should be – more prevention work. It’s very frightening to make those decisions and to have to live with them’, she argued.

Another issue for the panel was youth homelessness.

‘Being homeless is harmful for young people,’ said Olive Thomas. ‘I seem to find that when young people are offered housing, it’s normally not in very nice areas and that the accommodation is grotty. I know that for a fact. It’s happened to me and it’s happened to lots of other people that I know. They’re always told “you’ve got to take it because you won’t get anything else”. You can fight it like I did but a lot of young people feel forced to take it.’

What she wanted to know was how health professionals and health authorities were working with housing departments to ensure that young people were offered suitable accommodation in reasonable areas.

It was generally accepted by delegates who spoke that there was not enough co-operation, and the chair, Alice Crutwell of the National Youth Agency, spoke of the ‘striking’ lack of structured relationships between health authorities and key departments in local authorities involved in housing issues ‘that shouldn’t carry on’.

At a ‘debrief’ session after the conference, we (the Children’s Express news team covering the conference) talked about our impressions of the day’s events.

John and Amy attended one of the workshops about young black people and felt that it would have been better if more black people had been there to give their point of view. Out of some 15 people in the workshop, just three were black. They found some of the debate over their heads, and John felt intimidated by the number of adults which stopped him contributing to the debate.

We all felt there were not enough young people there. They should have involved us more. We are kids and we know what we are talking about.

Overall, we believe the conference was a good start because it did at least allow young people to have a voice and it was good that the professionals were listening. But it was only a start and how did we know they (the delegates) were taking it in?

All we can hope is that they take what they learned away and do something with it. As the chair of the young people’s panel put it: ‘Begin to talk to young people. Begin to involve’.

Children’s Express Newcastle is a programme of learning through journalism run in partnership with Save The Children.