One year since launching our Participation Strategy: involving young people throughout our work
Throughout February, Anna Freud are celebrating the first anniversary of our Participation Strategy. The strategy outlines our participation ethos and practices, including taking a rights-based approach in line with the Lundy model.
You can read some of the news pieces from Anna Freud here:
https://www.annafreud.org/news/marking-one-year-of-our-participation-strategy/
https://www.annafreud.org/news/we-are-the-champions/
https://www.annafreud.org/news/my-lived-experience-empowers-me/
Participation is a core component of our work at CORC. This month, we have joined others across Anna Freud in reflecting on the ways that young people, parents and carers shape the work we do, and how we share this learning with others.
Many of our research projects at CORC are shaped by young people or parents and carers, to make sure they are relevant, helpful and appropriate. Some examples from the last year include:
- Leading two young people’s advisory groups in Newham and Devon as part of the Kailo project evaluation, and co-producing the Kailo “Why young people attend YPAGs” guide.
- Setting up a young people’s advisory group as part of our evaluation of the Beyond programme in Merseyside
- Running a parent’s advisory group to help shape a needs assessment of perinatal mental health services in North Central and East London
- Collaborating with Anna Freud’s Participation Programme Assistants on several of our projects, including London Vanguard and Beyond.
In November, we welcomed two young people, Em and Chris, to the CORC forum, to share their experiences of being involved in Advisory Groups and research and the impact this had on them.
We also strive to share our knowledge of participatory approaches with others. For example, our Participation in Research Officer, Rachael Stemp, spoke at the NIHR Participation in Research Collaborative launch at Great Ormond’s Street Hospital, and Rachael joined research officer Anouska Kapoor on a panel at UCL's Children and Young People's Early Mental Health Career Researcher Committee event on participation. We have also run several “engaging young people in routine outcomes measures” trainings this year; the next training is on 7th July, and you can sign up here.
To top it all off, it has also been one year since the relaunch of the “For Young People” section of our CORC website, and we are really pleased to see increased engagement with these new pages. If you are a young person or practitioner looking to understand more about how young people can help shape services, this might be a great place to start.
