Youth participation and coproduction - Why is it important?

It’s March and spring daffodils in flower here in the North West (NW) bringing a welcome swathe of sunshine yellow even on the rainiest days.

The Psychological Professions Network (PPN) NW Expert by Experience (EbE) Steering Group blog this month is devoted to an interview exploring the inspirational work of Elsie Whittington – Greater Manchester Mental Health (GMMH) and Grace Ward, and other young people from Young Persons’ Advisory Service (YPAS). I was fortunate to meet them to discuss their innovative work in youth participation and coproduction. Elsie as children and young people’s participation lead at the Psychological Therapies Training Centre (PTTC) has focussed in her career on exploring opportunities for young people to shape a new tomorrow.

Elsie
I'm the children and young people's participation lead at the PTTC and my job is to make sure that children and young people, parents’ and carers’ voice and experience is really embedded into the curriculum when we're training new therapists and also supporting people who might have the participation lead role in the services that are part of our NW Learning Collaborative. Grace is based at YPAS and they host trainees that we train who spend three days a week at YPAS and two days a week with us at the training centre. They might be coming to train to be a children's cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) therapist or an educational mental health practitioner (EMHP). So that's my link with the participation team at YPAS, partly being a bit of a community of practice with Suziie, who's the participation lead there, and also trying to find, model and support best practice in terms of young people's meaningful participation and involvement in various processes around transforming children and young people's mental health services. Our aims for Children and Young People (CYP) align with the new Anna Freud participation strategy that came out last month. To find out more please follow this link.

Ali
Thank you Elsie for sharing a little about your role and about the importance of young people being listened to and valued. Grace, could you give us a flavour of your involvement in this work?

Grace
Yes, for example at YPAS when a member of staff is recruited there's a professional interview panel and a young person's interview panel with 2-3 young people on that panel through our young ambassadors’ group. The group are young people who may have been service users and are keen to stay involved with YPAS. That's how I started as a service user and then as a volunteer aged 16, employed then aged 18 and am now 20, I count as a young person (up to 25) at YPAS. We work within the service on young persons’ panels and we had the opportunity to work with Elsie on a pilot to look at how the Higher Education Institution (HEI) involves young people in their interview process, and  ways it is different to what we do at YPAS.
It's vital that young people are involved and to establish what we want to find out from the people we are interviewing. We had a week with a couple of interviews supported by Elsie with feedback sessions for every interview. Elsie collated feedback for the participants and considering I've interviewed for a few years now, it was refreshing to do it in in a different way, to see our experience through a new lens and to see how we can make it better.

Ali
I think that's really important you didn't just reinvent the process but you took a leap forward and you've evaluated it together. It's that sense of working together in coproduction rather than just collaboration. You really speak to that in everything that you say Grace.

Grace
It really was coproduction, which was lovely. We had young people who had never been on interview panels before so we looked at how to adapt the panels to make it more inclusive for them. It was a really organized process.

Ali
When things are well organised anticipatory anxiety is reduced so it’s really useful to have that preparatory conversation.

Grace
I was empowered through the process and I think what is good about Elsie and the participation leads at YPAS is their support. Elsie sat in on all the interviews, obviously for safeguarding reasons.

Ali
So you've been empowered by the way that Elsie works alongside you, as somebody who can facilitate and support your work behind the scenes.

Grace
Now that I work for YPAS as a Peer Researcher not just as a volunteer, it influences the way I look at the interview process within my role and the way we were enabled to break down our thinking and to focus on what we want to achieve from the interview because everyone expects something different from an interview candidate.

 Ali
Can I ask a question about the interview itself? How did you support the interviewee?

Grace
All interviews were virtual which can be better for some people. One of the things that really helped to reduce any tension or anxiety was we had an ice breaker. We had images of different cats representing different moods and we asked everyone to introduce themselves and their roles and then to say what mood? We encouraged discussion but informally, we wanted people to be respectful but to get involved as much as possible and I think the group discussion helped.

Ali
Your passion for your work is clear and I’m feeling really excited about how we can at PPN NW encourage and support your work beyond this blog.

Elsie
One of the reasons that I worked with YPAS for this pilot was because they are a really well supported and relatively well resourced participation group. Grace has shared she was a volunteer and now has moved into a paid role. In the areas that we work in across the NW there are different levels of development, some don't have a participation group and some do, maybe with two or three people that come or don't come to meetings. So it’s a mixture and it’s interesting that we're not a direct delivery organization but work collaboratively with pre-existing groups to support their practice rather than creating our own group.

 Ali
We really need people under the age of 25 who were service users to use their voice to effect change for service users, services and for themselves.

Grace
Engagement with young people is about making them feel valued and that includes reimbursement. I understand not every service can do that but reimbursing young people for their time is important to recognize their skills and participation.

Ali
Grace what you said is really important in acknowledging their participation.

Grace
I remember when I was volunteer being told if you don't want to come for a bit that’s fine but you can come back whenever you want. When I came back, it was like I had never left. It’s a balance there between upskilling and providing a space where young people can just be young people.

Ali
In opening doors through participation you're empowering yourself, taking your vision wider and empowering others through sharing your knowledge. Certainly, the skillset developed through your involvement includes fantastic transferable skills and opportunities for personal growth. My suggestion for you is to develop a toolkit for youth participation involvement.

Grace
I think that that's a great idea to take onboard.

Ali
Elsie, you are so youth centred in your work and advocate for the importance of informal education but what else would you say is integral for you?

Elsie
As a statutory service within the NHS, when working with children it needs to be underpinned by children's rights, participation rights, protection rights etc. In terms of being young person centred, when we're thinking about how we develop and transform mental health services and we recognise that every child has the right to protection from harm and access to good health and mental health care. Protection is totally linked with participation. Young people need to be listened to and heard and I think that's what all the work comes back to is the child, the young person or the family. Has anyone asked them what they need?

That's also the thing about informal education, it's what you mentioned and Grace too, by being involved in the interview process, you learn things useful for your future seeing how people interact. Participation groups and activities can be a safe place to put into practice what you've learned, being social in a safe space. A couple of quotes from our evaluation, talk about how being part of the participation groups has had more therapeutic value to the group than therapy and the participation group never intended to be therapeutic, but so many people reflected on the therapeutic value of it.

“I think when a company or organization represents young people or represents a helping hands for young people, then the voices and the opinions of young people in every level of… in every point of the process should be heard loud and clear.”

“it isn't just about interview panels, but participation in general. [Participating in interviews and other activities] was just as, if not more important and more beneficial to my mental health than the actual therapy that I got itself”

(Anonymised quotes are from Youth Panellists who shared their voices in the Youth Panel Pilot project with the consent of Elsie Whittington to publish in this blog)

Ali
That's fascinating, so the journey of participation in its own right and the sense of empowerment gained from that is really life changing. What would be the key message that you would like somebody reading this to take away?

Grace
I think the big takeaway is if you work in a service engaging with young people, then you need to have some form of youth participation group with young people and this is where co-production starts and is so important.

Ali
Thank you Grace, I think that encapsulates the strategic aspects of how to grow youth participation work.

Elsie
Everybody needs to be informed that there is a group and to know that participation is more than a feedback form. It's ensuring that people know something happens when they say something, when they ask questions and that the message gets delivered. Even if you don't have participation in your job title, it's an essential part of your role to be well informed about it and to know what's going on in your service. It's about how you embed youth participation work in everything you do.

Ali
Thank you Elsie and Grace for sharing your knowledge and expertise with me and our readers. I wish you every success in your future projects and careers.

Coming in April- #ClassClinCollective members Will Curvis and Katie Place share their thoughts on the barriers and challenges class plays in selecting a career within the psychological professions.

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Until next month take the best care of yourself.

Ali Bryant