CORC Forum 2024: our reflections
In this blog, Chrissy summarises the CORC team’s reflections and highlights from the 2024 CORC Forum, with considerations for CORC Forums in the future.
On Thursday 21 November 2024, we enjoyed another great turn-out to our annual event, with over 100 attendees from CORC members, education professionals, researchers and people working for services supporting the mental health and wellbeing for children and young people attending.
It was good to see such a strong engagement across all of the talks, with attendees asking considered questions to all the speakers, generating some good discussions. We’ve discussed that we could have in fact allowed longer for this, and we will consider this for next year, along with the benefits of possibly having a hybrid event, providing further networking and discussion possibilities amongst attendees.
If you attended and have further thoughts or questions to any of the subjects, or the even itself, the CORC team welcome you to get in touch at CORC@annafreud.org.
Our keynote speaker this year was Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou, Strategic Co-Lead and Programme Director, Anna Freud and University College London. Her talk on ‘Emotional triggers and associated burdens experienced by adolescent school pupils with diagnoses of ADHD, autism or both’ shared qualitative research completed with young people. Rachael Grant, Regional Officer felt this was incredibly insightful, particularly for staff that work in or with schools. “The importance of consulting with participation groups about how to meaningfully use outcome measures” was her key takeaway from this session. She added that “the colours, fonts, translations and general presentation all have a part to play in making measurement tools effective for all.”
Overall the CORC team have noted how useful the personal stories and experiences in each of the event’s talks sparked thought and discussion. Anoushka Kapour, Research Officer highlighted that she “especially liked the use of the young people’s art/pictures shown alongside these research findings; it was so meaningful to see the child’s representation of how they are experiencing their environment”.
As a counsellor working with Children and Young people, with a high number of clients either assessed or waiting for a neurodivergent assessment, I was particularly interested in this talk and believe that being able to understand and hear from these young people is crucial in ensuring an informed approach. Georgia shared the important perspective that we need to challenge and address the current assumptions that are made of those with autism or ADHD, and instead understand the high emotional burden these young people can experience. For them, it’s the need to address the environments and teacher/peer interactions on them, which is having an impact on their ill-mental health and/or their lack of school attendance. Yet the current approach is that these individuals are trying to ‘be fixed’.
Jenna Jacob, CORC Research Lead reflected that it was “wonderful to hear about the co-produced development of an outcome measure for children and young people who are neurodivergent.” Adding that “this is particularly relevant for our evaluations that focus on programmes supporting children and young people who are at risk of not staying in education, and those who may be affected by violence.”
Both the CORC team and attendees really appreciated the positive narrative around this topic, and we hope to provide further updates of the MESI outcome measures being trialled at some point next year.
Roisin McEvoy, Head of Schools Training and National Programmes at Anna Freud, spoke at the very end of the Forum, but her talk on 'Belonging, connectedness and school attendance', related so well to Georgia’s talk, and our work with outcome measures. She highlighted that to improve all children and young people’s wellbeing, we need to make sense of the work that schools are doing, and hear the views of children and young people, so we can support staff in schools and colleges to make their settings places for all to feel they can belong to.
It was interesting to hear Roisin’s reflections on all the factors influencing school attendance. We know from our work with schools that this is one of their top priorities currently to great to be able to help education staff reflect on how they’re responding and share some ideas for addressing the challenge.
Neurodiversity and participation are two themes which have continually cropped up in conversation with services this year. Across the event we heard of the different ways that young people’s voices and priorities are being held at the centre of projects, from research to service design.
Rachael Stemp, our Participation in Research Officer at CORC and Evidence Based Practice Unit, Anna Freud delivered a talk on ‘Why young people get involved in mental health research: lessons from recent projects’ and highlighted the co-created Kailo ‘Making the most of motivations: why young people attend advisory groups’ guidance which details insight from young people into the motivating factors. Rachael Grant, Regional Officer reflected she will be referring to this when supporting members in their participation journey. She felt “it was also fantastic to hear Emily’s and Chris’s perspective about the personal benefits they gained from their experience of participation”.
Georgina Mutton, Membership and Development Officer agreed that one of her highlights “was hearing Chris talk about his experiences of being a young person involved in research, and how the process of being part of an advisory group and connecting with other young people had benefitted his mental health”. Rachael concurred that “it was great to involve young people in the talk itself; as it really speaks to the topic of involving young people in research, by hearing from them there and then.” Annouska Kapoor, Research Officer added that she thought “the fact that one of them made the effort to join the meeting is a huge compliment to their collaborative work”.
Our Research Lead, Jenna Jacob incorporates participation in all our projects, with peer researchers being embedded into our project teams, and incorporating children and young people’s voices in our work. She said that “one of the things that really resonated with me, and what I have been thinking about, is the longevity of participation, and how to ensure we hold relationships over time. Building on existing trusted relationships is one way of doing that”. Within one of our evaluations, we have recently been discussing how we can work together more and are making plans to incorporate Peer Power’s young champions into this evaluation more, alongside our peer researcher and young people’s advisory group.
Kate Dalzell, Head of Evidence-Led Improvement was pleased we could showcase some really thoughtful work about hearing and acting on young people’s own feedback: “young people are experts in their own wellbeing, and several of the sessions were about different ways to routinely listen and take on that insight (be it at large scale in #BeeWell, in research through a Young Person Advisory Group, or as a service through routinely enquiring into outcomes). This is so important to us at CORC.”
There was a link across the different talks within this year’s Forum that considered supporting children and young people who feel different from the norm and struggle because of those differences. Lee Atkins, Regional Officer also highlighted that another thread throughout was about “how we engage these children and young people; those that are neurodiverse, those involved in mental health research, those who do not attend school, and within the BeeWell work”.
It was great to hear from Francesca Speakman, Programme Manager for #BeeWell in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with her talk: Learning from #BeeWell in Greater Manchester; using data to inform regional systems and make young people’s wellbeing everybody’s business.
Ben Ritchie, Informatics Lead said “one of my main takeaways was how valuable it was to hear about ways of breaking down complicated problems, and how young people's participation is key in this, which was done through hearing the views of around half of the young people in Manchester who participated in BeeWell.”
Jenna Jacob, CORC Research Lead is supervising a PhD student whose project is embedded within #BeeWell and is focused on the exploration of mental health, wellbeing and physical activity. Watch this space for initial findings soon. She said “this also ties in really nicely with our increased focus on the exploration of wellbeing including how best to measure it and associated outcomes”.
Our newest member to the CORC Team, Arthur Pander Maat, Research Officer, particularly enjoyed the talk by Sohila Sawhney, Senior Research and Evaluation Manager at Barnardo's: "Multiple and complex." The journey of developing a new outcomes framework at Barnardos. He reflected that “it's clear that as an organisation they are at the cutting edge of thinking on this topic. The lessons she shared will have been particularly relevant to delegates from our voluntary sector members, who, as we know from our work, are keen to innovate when it comes to evidencing and communicating their impact.”
I also felt it was incredibly useful hearing about the great work by Barnardo’s and their advocacy for the benefits of working with outcome measures. Within her talk Sohila said: “don’t apologise for outcome measure tools in your practice – lean into the real benefits they can provide”. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Sohila noted that “the journey they’ve been on, and will continue to be on, ensures the work they do can keep flowing back to them, to learn, reflect and keep up their great work changing childhood and changing lives”.
Additionally, when discussing the Forum with our Advisory group this week, this example by Barnardo’s was felt to be extremely useful. We plan to share a case study on this in due course for wider consideration.
Wrapping up the CORC Forum Kate Dalzell, Head of Evidence-Led Improvement said she “felt the CORC Forum this year engaged with some really current issues for our members and network in supporting children and young people with their mental health”. And that “it’s great to be part of sharing learning as it emerges.”
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Chrissy Norwich, Communications and Marketing Officer, CORC