Creating a Healthier Scotland

Youth Investigation Team

Final Report

December 2016

Welcome

Hello, we are the Healthier Scotland Youth Team, working with the Scottish Government and key partners across Scotland to understand and create actions for a Healthier Scotland.

In November 2015 we established our team of 11 young people, aged 15-24 from across Scotland - from Aberdeen and Dundee, Stirling and Stenhouse, across the central belt as well as Forres in Moray.

Some of us have volunteered for other health/social care related projects and others had a keen interest in improving public health. We come from a variety of backgrounds, some of us are in school, at college or university studying: economics, politics and social policy, physiology, and sports science. We also have part time jobs and represent organisations in our free time including The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Beat Eating Disorders Scotland (B-Eat) and the Scottish Youth Parliament.

Through this process we have brought diverse experiences of health to the conversation, and where there have been gaps we have engaged others to represent the wide scope of young people’s experiences and knowledge of public services and health in Scotland.

Our recommendations and actions are ambitious to enable real improvements and we look forward to working with you to make our collective vision of a Healthier Scotland a reality!

Foreword

At Young Scot we know young people are passionate, positive, active, creative and innovative. They are also compassionate, caring deeply about their families, friends and communities. We believe that young people are not just Scotland’s future, they are powerful and positive assets to our communities here and now. We have witnessed the powerful contribution young people make when given the opportunity to shape policy and service delivery. Young people’s involvement in the Creating a Healthier Scotland conversation has provided the opportunity to do just that and to work alongside real decision makers to help lead the creation of a healthier Scotland.

Louise Macdonald OBE, Young Scot CEO

The Young Scot Youth Investigation Team’s involvement with the Creating a Healthier Scotland national conversation has proved to be hugely successful, giving young people the opportunity to explore what matters to them about health and social care and to make a positive contribution towards the shaping of policy and service delivery. It is clear that the young people involved care passionately about the issues affecting them, their families, friends and communities. They have embraced this opportunity to contribute to the conversation, and they should be congratulated on producing this very clear, well thought-out report. I look forward to hearing about the Youth Investigation team’s future progress and hope that they can maintain this positive momentum, making the most of what is an excellent opportunity to become improvers and innovators, and to spread their learning as far as possible.

Shona Robison, MSP Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport

Background

In August 2015, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing launched a national conversation on the future of health and social care to help shape a transformational change on Scotland’s approach to population health, and to the delivery of health and social care services by 2030.

To ensure young people could play a leadership role, Young Scot was commissioned by the Scottish Government’s Creating a Healthier Scotland Joint Improvement Team to involve young people in the national conversation in a meaningful and informed way to explore three broad questions:

1. What support do we need in Scotland to make healthier choices?

2. What areas of health and social care matter most to you?

3. Thinking about the future of health and social care services, where should our future focus be?

Young Scot hosted an online discussion and supported us, the Youth Investigation Team, to explore the aims of the conversation and used codesign methodology to identify what a healthier Scotland should look like from a young person’s perspective.

The online discussion, hosted on Young Scot Rewards, had over 300 young people responding to the conversation questions, with many issues being raised.

The data from the online discussion contributed directly to the Scottish Government’s own national conversation, and also supported the start of our work. Some of the most common themes and issues we identified included:

• A stronger focus on eating better and exercising

• Specific health care professionals - and the importance of specific health care professionals and the NHS

• Young people having more of a say in how health services are developed

To form the Healthier Scotland Youth nvestigation Team, Young Scot promoted the opportunity nationally to encourage young people with a passion in the areas of health and wellbeing to get involved. Young Scot reached out to specialist organisations to ensure the group was representative and inclusive.

Supported by staff, where appropriate, we worked through Young Scot’s co-design methodology to ensure the project was led by us but also included the views of key stakeholders. We were encouraged to recognise gaps in own knowledge and experience and seek the views and opinions of experts, service users and other young people throughout the project.

We mapped out, social and material (infrastructure) change factors to understand the wider health and social care system for young people in Scotland. We used this work as the basis to explore what we think needs to change and what the impact would be, before exploring and challenging our ideas with other young people at an ideas gathering session.

In this final report, we are contributing to the wider Creating a Healthier Scotland conversation and identify how our group can evolve to continue young people’s leadership in creating a healthier Scotland.

During the investigation we found four key priorities:

From the Youth Investigation Team

1. To tackle the stigma around mental health

2. To explore relationships young  people have with health and social care professionals

3. The importance of young people focused health education in informal education and through “Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) in the school curriculum

   From Online Conversation

4. To improve health habits in young people when it comes to eating and exercise.

   Conclusions

5. We concluded that across the various themes, information and education offer the most effective cross cutting solution that would enable improvements and support young people to live healthier lives and be more aware of health and social care issues.

Summary

We considered the health system as a whole and how our recommendations could make improvements across multiple fields.

We strongly believe that by improving education there would be a strong knock on effect across the three key themes below:

Change the delivery, structure and content of the personal, social, health education (PSHE) and physical education (PE) curriculums in Scottish secondary schools to ensure all young people are equipped with the knowledge and tools to live healthy lives.

Introduce a zero tolerance system where young people are equipped with the knowledge they need to understand mental health, wellbeing and the negative effects that stigma can have.

Health and social care professionals in Scotland should improve their relationship with young people through more accessible services and effective communication.

Effectively communicating to young people how healthy eating and fitness effects their body and aim to encourage healthy lifestyle and behaviours early.

10 Key Impacts to benefit Scotland

We strongly believe that by carrying out the 34 key actions, across the four themes, these actions will help to deliver ten key impacts to benefit the whole of Scotland.

1. Young people are empowered to make decisions.

2. Promote preventative measures rather than reactive.

3. More awareness and understanding of health and social care.

4. Monetary cost to Government is reduced.

5. Stigma/discrimination is reduced.

6. Encourage a more open society/breaks taboos and changes attitudes.

7. Reduce the burden on key services.

8. Improve attainment.

9. Improve the overall health of young people.

10. Results in better relationships between citizens and services.

Team Investigation

We explored broad issues across health and social care and, based on our own experiences and the research we undertook, we prioritised six key areas for further investigation:

• Approaches to education

• Relationships with health professionals

• Stigma around mental health

• Understanding wellbeing

• Understanding social care

• Preventative services.

During an early meet-up we explored key change factors using the Scottish Governments Individual, Social and Material Factor Behaviour Change (ISM) tool and began to analyse our findings. Throughout the in-depth investigation process we were encouraged to think about the value of our insights and how making improvements will impact wider society in Scotland.

We started thinking about how changing the way people thought about our health care systems, their own bodies and about health issues at a young age could have a profound effect on the individuals’ futures as well as changing the culture we live in.

We came up with three statements that voiced the change we wanted to see:

1. If we understand how own body works we will take better care of it

2. If we learn to empathise and understand people’s experiences we will be less judgemental

3. If we know where to go when we need help we will be better placed to make better decisions.

Based on their change statements, we synthesised our insights to focus on three key themes that we felt could have an impact on changing health in Scotland:

• Education

• Stigma

• Relationships with Health Professionals

A popular area identified from the online survey we felt needed further exploration was ‘Eating & Fitness’.

Workshop

We hosted a workshop with 30 young people to exploring barriers and opportunities to help bring in more voices into our work.

From this session we discovered:

• Many young people are unaware of stigma and the impact it can have. Throughout all sessions the young people were keen to breakdown barriers around stigma and talk about the issues, particularly in the context of mental health.

• Many young people struggle to seek help from health professionals. They suggested this should be challenged through informal relationship building meetings in a school or youth work environment to tackle stereotypes and misconceptions.

• Education is paramount to broadening young people’s perspectives and knowledge of health and health services in Scotland, which should be seen as the backbone to engaging with young people about health in Scotland.

Following further investigation, our team planned and helped to facilitate an ideas gathering session with 40 young people. This provided added perspective and helped shape our recommendations in collaboration with others.

Some ideas that were developed on the day included:

• Prize dispensing water machines in schools to encourage young people to start and maintain the habit of drinking two litres of water throughout the day

• Not segregating PE by gender and trying to make sport more about having fun and running around rather than competing

• Using school gardens to teach young people the nutritional values of foods and how to eat a balanced diet in a hands-on way.

Armed with insights from young people from across Scotland and experts working and advising across a range of related disciplines, we developed recommendations to improve the nation’s health with a youth focus.

The insights that led to these recommendations are discussed across the next pages as well as the specific actions and impact that can be expected to be achieved.

Theme 1: Education

• Young people from across Scotland have reported that the standard of education and delivery of PSHE varies across Scotland.

• Government encouraging schools to regard health and wellbeing as being on par with numeracy and literacy but is not being effectively implemented.

• Young people do not believe that the current delivery of PSHE or PE in secondary schools fully meets their needs.

• PSHE does not properly address topics surrounding sex, gender and sexuality as they are seen as uncomfortable to talk about.

• Teachers aren’t trained specifically in PSHE.

• Social Stigma, health literacy, body confidence and wellbeing were all areas young people felt they were deficient in their learning.

• Young people feel external speakers are more effective when covering health related topics eg. dieticians talking about diet related topics.

• There is no standard for ‘health’ education in Scotland, PSHE is a gap in the timetable that can be used in any way a school sees fit.

• Teachers we spoke to feel PSHE time should be put to better use.

• Many young people feel current PSHE is a waste of time.

• Young people don’t feel that they are taught about wellbeing in school.

Young people at the ideas gathering identified a real gap in the topics they learned about through PSHE, particularly mental health and social care, which could limit their understanding of provided health services and the inability to approach teachers and health professionals when concerned about their health.

We identified that young people didn’t feel that health was a key aspect of education. There is not enough emphasis created around ensuring young people understand their bodies and minds, feel comfortable discussing their health or opening up about any concerns or questions; nor do they feel they can approach professionals or teachers for guidance and support about their health.

Education was seen by us as the most effective and substantial way of engaging young people in healthier conversations and changing culture. This was the most accessible resource to targeting young people on mass to help them better understand health, relationships, mental health and social care.

The team appreciated that often there are health and mental health related modules in schools, however these often feel like a box ticking exercise and of a ‘one size fits all’ approach without considering the opportunity to tackle factors such as, sexuality, sexual health and relationships, mental health, diet, fitness and body image, social care and wellbeing. These issues should be addressed in a much more open and discursive environment with the right type of teacher.

We believe there should be an improved and standardised, yet flexible, health education across all Scottish schools, delivered by trained teachers and developed by young people for young people. The curriculum must cover mental health, wellbeing, life skills, social care as well as ‘live’ signposting to health services for young people.

In order to ensure all young people reached, we want this programme to tie in with youth clubs and care services to make sure all young people get access to this information at the right stage in their life, particularly at times of transition. Some of the ideas outlined at the workshops that young people wanted to see in a future PSE included:

How to detect mental health problems, who to trust, how to be healthy, how to talk about issues, self-love, body confidence, improved awareness of health and social care services, visits to sexual health clinics and other health professionals, early preparation for life changes, up to date laws related to disabled people – showing young people want exposed to a variety of topics in school and not just drugs and alcohol.

Education Actions

1. Young people and teachers should be involved in co-designing a new flexible Health and Social curriculum for school.

2. The new curriculum should be mandatory for all pupils in Scotland (for example like Religious Education), not just until S3/4.

3. The curriculum should have the flexibility to tackle local issues but still cover the key topics young people see as important.

4. Health Education should be delivered across the curriculum and explored in classes like PE, Home Economics, Modern Studies as well as PSHE.

5. Teachers should be trained by young people to inform young people on the personal aspects of health e.g. their self-esteem, based on young people’s life experiences and not sugar coated.

6. Young people should be invited into schools in a stigma free environment to deliver PSHE on specific areas where they have personal experience, for example peer mentors around eating disorders.

7. PSHE should be a more discursive class where experiences and opinions of young people are shared rather than defined and influenced solely by the teacher.

8. Segregation in core PE needs to be optional and a new approach to the types of activity should be considered. For example moving to a ‘Rounders based approach’ where everyone can get involved in a fun activity and not stress on sport or performance.

9. In PE the benefits of exercise and being active need to be properly understood, for body and mind. The focus should be on health benefits rather than the traditional goals of a low BMI or slender physique.

10. Changes need to be made to the way young people are taught to focus on the positives of a good lifestyle rather than negative views for example remove the ‘good food’, ‘bad food’ mentality and be more realistic and teach about moderation. This includes online safety and knowing who to trust online and through social media.

Theme 2: Stigma

Stigma and negative stereotypes are often shaped and learned by norms formed in groups such as school, youth clubs or sports teams.

Classes such as health and wellbeing can affect student’s education and perceptions if implemented as important subjects - at present they are not classed as important as other subjects.

Young people often feel pressured through a fear of stigma and judgement and are less likely to use health clinics due to fear of judgement.

Young people witness the effects of stigma in their everyday life and believe that stigma is a severe problem in todays society.

 Due to the lack of understanding of the term stigma it is clearly something that had not come up formally or been discussed in a lot of young people’s lives.

 If there was more peer support for individuals with mental health issues they would feel less isolated.

People are unaware of what mental health problems actually look like.

 The younger generation can be more accepting and understanding, older generations also need to be aware of prejudice in all its forms.

Lots of people wanting more understanding and change regardless of whether they themselves suffer stigma.

There was a real lack of understanding of the word stigma, many of the young people used tags or stereotypes themselves when discussing certain topics or groups of people, but when it was explained everyone understood what it was and why it was an issue.

The opinions of young people concerning stigma were that more information was needed and desired. From the youth engagement workshop it was identified that most people witnessed, used or were effected by negative stigma on a daily basis and wanted to see a more inclusive and respecting society where no one is demonised for any reason health related or otherwise.

Stigma can have a huge effect on a young person’s wellbeing. Young people see negative stigmatisation every day for many different reasons including sexual health, gender, mental health, eating disorders, care, and sexuality, race, who your family is or where you are from. Young people want to see prejudice, stigma, bullying and negative stereotyping eradicated and Scotland to become a fully inclusive society.

In order to move towards that we found it to be very important that young people understand where stigma comes from, how they can notice it happening and be confident speaking up, or out about it.

The problem of stigma and discrimination needs to be highlighted by coming up with ideas that encourage acceptance and empathy, to ultimately eliminate stigma by breaking down barriers in society.

In this new society people should be more self-aware, to challenge perceptions and more likely to seek support and receive early intervention treatment.

We recommend introducing a zero tolerance system where young people are equipped with the knowledge they need to understand the negative effects that stigma can have.

Stigma Actions

1. Scotland should encourage zero tolerance to negative stigma in schools by both teachers and students.

2. Stories from young people with lived experience of stigmatised issues should be shared.

3. All young people should have access to support if they feel they’re on the receiving end of stigma or discrimination.

4. Stigma in the media should be challenged and viewed as unacceptable.

5. Schools should arrange visits to clinics, hospitals and care homes to help break down barriers and misconceptions.

6. Give charities who are experts on stigmatised topics the chance to engage with and teach young people.

7. Young people should celebrate inclusion days in school to normalise topics at a young age.

8. Stop applying negative connotations to specific topics in schools: demonising teen pregnancy and young offenders. Often demonising makes it harder to ask questions and open up if children are affected personally.

9. Stop removing young carers, young parents, or children dealing with crisis at home from classes or creating classes only attended by these groups as part of their normal school hours. This highlights them as different and removes them from their peers - alternatively offer after school and extracurricular support sessions.

Theme 3: Relationships with Professionals

• Young people are not comfortable talking to doctors about sex/mental health. Even just talking to a doctor who is of the opposite sex can create embarrassment and judgement.

• Young people try to avoid using health care services apparent that they would rather deal with it themselves.

• Older youths don’t know how confidential their talks with GPs are and if things will get back to their parents.

• There is a fear of not being taken seriously by adults in positions of authority.

• Young people are more likely to google their problems than seek professional help – this is even more prominent when the symptoms are embarrassing.

• The rigid health system means people who seek help can have issues and form negative views of the service which stay with them for life.

• A lot of young people worry about being seen going into a clinic or GP in their local community.

• There are trust issues between young people, GP’s and other health professionals.

• Young people are more likely to be influenced by family and peers.

• There is a desire to improve communication and understanding between health care professionals and patient groups.

Many young people rely on self, peer or family diagnosis. There needs to be awareness and signposting on trusted places to go for quality information.

There is a lack of knowledge and understanding of mental health and how to get support. This lack of willingness to seek professional help also raises a concern that there is a health taboo and embarrassment about discussing health and wellbeing.

There must be an effort to initiate positive relationships between professionals and young people to break down the barriers which stop these relationships from strengthening or even existing.

Some young people can be very vulnerable and have the need for emotional support and reassurance. By building better relationships, earlier intervention and preventative action can be taken, allowing for earlier treatment and increasing access for future support if they have had a positive experience.

Often for services like sexual health clinics, young people are not aware of the services on offer or how the interaction will work once inside. It should be made clear to young people that these services are there to help and support them.

Improving young people’s knowledge of support services will improve trust between professionals and young people.

They will be more likely to seek the care they need by going straight to the right place, reducing the use of GP services.

We suggest this is done by improving accessibility and through more effective communications.

Health Professional Actions

1. Meeting professionals in an informal set-up through schools and youth groups will help to break down barriers and raise awareness of the various services available.

2. Teachers should invite professionals into the classroom to share the services young people may be likely to seek help from.

3. Professionals and teachers should make sure they are speaking and acting in an age appropriate way, for example teaching very young people about calories and BMI could potentially act as a negative trigger.

4. Health professionals need to be given the time to understand the young people during sessions and encourage them to make the young people comfortable and feel safe.

5. People who are seen as a support to young people need to stop focusing on physical symptoms for mental health issues and really understand what can be going on internally for a young person.

6. Young people themselves need to understand the dangers of self-diagnosis and relying on the internet and other people’s views.

7. Making school nurses and pastoral support a point of contact where pupils can ask questions and share concerns not only about physical health, but mental, wellbeing and sexual health.

8. Staff in schools should be trained to notice signals (for example Mental Health First Aid) and offer support to young people who are struggling with health and wellbeing issues.

Theme 4: Eating and Fitness

• Comments on dieting suggested they encouraged both positive and negative eating habits.

• A big emphasis is put on eating five fruits a day rather than considering the rest of your diet.

• Girls especially can become disengaged from physical activity due to experiences in school PE.

• Young people who didn’t exercise said that if it wasn’t for PE they would not take time out of their lives to exercise.

• Parents play a big role in how well a young person eats.

• Young people who do exercise described gaining a good feeling from it and felt one hour a day should be compulsory.

• Healthy food is more expensive and harder to prepare.

• Activity choice was the reason a lot of people did not enjoy core PE.

• Smoking and alcohol were mentioned as things not to start doing suggesting they were both seen as addictive.

• There was a lot of confusion around guided daily allowance labels and the science behind calories.

• Young people understood a lot of the theory behind what food is good and bad for you, they mentioned the ‘eat well plate’ as a way to get a balanced diet.

Eating and fitness was discussed often throughout the project but it seems there is already a lot of focus on influencing young people’s behaviour in this area. The issue was highlighted across all engagement and it was clear there are improvements required where there is already a lot of initiatives going on.

Similar to other taboo subjects, information shouldn’t focus on the negative but should show young people the benefits of eating healthily and demonstrating alternative approaches to get them enjoying exercise.

Improving young people’s understanding of food and its effect on their bodies is important. Compulsory physical education provides an opportunity for teachers to help improve school pupil’s understanding of this topic.

Not all young people enjoy the competitive nature of sport nor a culture where sports people act and dress in certain ways. This lack of enjoyment could really put people of any sort of exercise as they associate it with their time in school and struggling in a sport that they did not enjoy. Physical activities should be focused on having fun to make it more accessible to people who could really benefit from it.

Council facilities could be much more accessible for young people to get involved with and use, such as an after school session or having free outdoor gym equipment. Again more fun physical activities should be available for young people who may not be interested in standard sports such as role play, orienteering frisbee, cycling, Quidditch and lightsabre fencing were all suggested.

By giving young people the facts about healthy eating and physical activity, young people will inherently understand that the choices they make are having an effect on their body and overall health.

Through doing this, young people will maintain a level of fitness that allows them to enjoy physical activity and create healthy eating habits that will stay with them into adulthood and beyond.

Eating & Fitness Actions

1. Schools should shine a more positive light on health in education. They should discourage casting a negative shadow over living a healthy lifestyle as a result of focusing on what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for you.

2. Young people should be given the opportunity to participate in the kind of physical activity they want in PE in order to help everyone create a more positive relationship with the capabilities of their bodies. More importantly, young people should be able to enjoy physical activity.

3. Ensure that children understand that how they view their body will have an effect on their mental health.

4. Young people should learn to understand the difference between a reliable and unreliable source when reading about health, fitness, and nutrition, particularly on the internet, where social media is awash with fads and dubious articles about matters relating to your health.

5. There should be a greater focus on ways to get young people to form healthy habits (physical and mental) at a young age. This could involve parent/teacher groups discussing the best ways in which to encourage this, and allow them theopportunity to gain the knowledge required to support the forming of these habits.

6. Young people can be helped to access leisure and fitness facilities by offering free/discounted entry with their Young Scot card.

7. Private changing facilities should be available in PE classes to avoid bodily self-consciousness becoming a reason for people not to want to take part.

Actions for Change

Through the youth team’s experience exploring change factors we were very aware that anything we suggest would need to be able to have a positive impact from a range of perspectives. This chart shows the impact we expect to see, and the actions (numbered) which we see as drivers for this change.

• Education - 1, 6, 7

• Stigma - 2

• Health Professionals - 6, 7

• Eating and Fitness - 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

• Education - 2, 5, 7

• Stigma - 1, 4, 5, 7

• Health Professionals - 1, 2, 3, 6, 8

• Eating and Fitness - 1, 3, 4, 5

• Education - 2, 5, 9, 10

• Stigma - 1, 4, 5, 7

• Health Professionals - 1, 2, 3, 6, 8

• Eating and Fitness - 1, 3, 4, 5

• Education - 6

• Stigma - 2, 6

• Health Professionals - 6, 7

• Eating and Fitness - 2, 4, 5

• Education - 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

• Stigma - 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9

• Health Professionals - 5

• Eating and Fitness - 3, 6, 7

• Education - 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

• Stigma - 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8

• Health Professionals - 7

• Eating and Fitness - 1, 2, 5

• Education - 4

• Stigma - 6

• Health Professionals - 1, 2, 7, 8

• Eating and Fitness - 4, 5

• Education - 2, 5, 8

• Stigma - 8, 9

• Health Professionals - 3, 7, 8

• Eating and Fitness - 2, 5, 7

• Education - 2, 7, 8, 9

• Stigma - 1, 4

• Health Professionals - 3, 5, 6

• Eating and Fitness - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

• Education - 4, 6

• Stigma - 1, 3, 5, 6, 8

• Health Professionals - 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8

• Eating and Fitness - 4

Core Youth Investigation Team

Andrew Hanton, age 17, Forres

Cameron Gillies, age 17, Stirling

Cameron Fraser, age 15, Bathgate

Rebeka Glass, age 16, Dundee

Beth Roberston, age 23, Edinburgh

Emma Lindsay, age 20, Aberdeen

Chelsea Rocks, age 18, Glasgow

Emma Saggers, age 20, Edinburgh

Methodology

Using Young Scot’s bespoke co-design methodology to support the aims of the Healthier Scotland Conversation, the partnership between Young Scot and the Scottish Government set out to:

• Gather views on the three questions from young people across Scotland online

• Establish a national youth project team to:

  • Conduct a youth-led, in depth qualitative investigation into health and social care

  • Host an ideas gathering to bring together young people to discuss the findings and begin to create recommendations and solutions.

• Young people in Scotland would have increased opportunity to shape and influence services related to health and social care.

• The Youth Team gain confidence, a sense of empowerment and raised aspirations, and a greater awareness and understanding of the decision making process.

• The Scottish Government will have a better understanding of what is important to young people in relation to health and social care and will be able to improve their services accordingly, as well as increased meaningful engagement with young people.

Youth Investigation Team - Timeline

Oct 2015: Recruitment

Explore

20th Nov: Kick off – Personal Perceptions

20th Dec: Residential – Group Perceptions & Research Plan

30th Jan: Meet up - ISM – Change factors

Create

20th Feb: Residential – Wide Recommendations

2nd Mar: Workshop (Glasgow) – Exploring key areas with other young people

17th Mar: Meet-up – Synthesis and coming up with Actions

Reflect

29th April: Ideas Gathering – how would other young people implement these actions

Recommend

14th May: Meet-up – Discussing the Impact and preparing to share the journey

11th June: Residential – Reporting

Explore

• Initial perception/experience of public services

• Desk research – research reports, on-line articles

• Primary Research – Surveys, discussions with peers, Interviewing health, education and research professionals

• Attending wider conversation discussions.

Create

• Discussing future visions

• Using ISM to think about the factors of change

• Empathising with extreme personas

Reflect

• Sharing work with Children and Young People’s Advisory Board which reports to the Scottish Government

• Hosting an open workshop to gain input on key themes

• Drafting key actions

• Defining impact.

Recommend

• Considering how to tell the story of their work

• The final recommendations and report

Implement

• Meeting with Scottish Government Ministers in order to encourage a response on the recommendations.

Online Discussion Findings

An online discussion was hosted by Young Scot Rewards and filled in exclusively by young people age 11-25. The online discussion was designed as three open conversation questions and shared across Young Scot’s network and social media channels. The data generated was added to the Scottish Government’s Creating a Healthier Scotland Conversation - What Matters To You Report, and has also been used to inspire our ideas to ensure they represent the voice of other young people in the conversation.

The discussion received 315 responses with interim raw data being used by the Scottish Government on the 1st February 2016 for inclusion in the conversation report.

Across the three questions the key areas of focus for young people across health and social care were early intervention, prevention and education. They had a strong focus on how behaviour, social demographics and lifestyles can affect both their physical and mental health. The most common topics discussed were healthy eating and physical activity.

Many responses looked at the topics of healthy eating and exercise. The main focus was on suggesting ways behaviour change and building healthy habits could be made easier for young people as well as preventing common negative behaviours like smoking and drinking.

(Healthcare is care that is provided mostly by doctors, nurses and therapists in our NHS hospitals and GP Practices).

Many responses mentioned specific health professionals: doctors, nurses and the NHS in general, with a range of specific responses relating to mental health and social care.

Many responses related to giving citizens (especially young people) a say in how health services are developed.

‘I think that the public should have a say in what happens in the hospitals and healthcare should remain free.’

‘More community based services that are accessible to all.’

‘I think the people of Scotland (us) know best how it is and I think we should vote and you should be able to access health/social care very easily.’

About the Youth Investigation Team

The purpose of the Youth Investigation Team has been to empower a group of young people to investigate health and present their findings to the Scottish Government.

Throughout the project we have received respect, leading to us being able to speak about the views and opinions of Scotland’s young people on health, wellbeing and social care to a variety of stakeholders .

Already we have been approached to continue our involvement in various projects to ensure young people’s voices are heard. These include:

• Feeding into the ‘Our Voice Framework’ and looking at how the Scottish Government engage with young people.

• Taking part in a project considering the re-design of the PSHE curriculum with Education Scotland.

• Presenting our findings and recommendations to the Transformational Change Programme Board at Scottish Government.

• Working with the Children and Young People’s Health Support Group to see how our recommendations can be championed.

We have developed a deep understanding of health and social care and identified what Scotland’s young people think needs to change between now and 2030 in order to make a healthy and supportive Scotland accessible to all young people.

As the project concludes, Young Scot, the Scottish Government and our team will explore how we can evolve and maintain a leading role in creating a healthier Scotland.

Our team is aware that this project has been a broad investigation and for us is has raised more questions, highlighted areas of interest or sparked new passions. Some of these further considerations include:

• How can our actions be developed and implemented?

• How can we continue to be advocates for young people and see their recommendations put into practice?

• When can this be done in order to get the ball rolling for a Healthier Scotland by 2030?

We have experienced working on a complex issue and used a design methodology to explore, create, reflect and make our recommendations.

Young Scot will continue to support us to make sure the legacy of this project is utilised to its full potential and that the skills, knowledge and relationships we have developed will be a prime asset for change.

Acknowledgements

Young Scot, our partners and the Healthier Scotland Youth Investigation Team would like to thank all the individuals, organisations and participants who provided support and an invaluable contribution to our work including:

• Over 400 young people

• The Scottish Government

• National Healthier Scotland Conversation

• Education Scotland

• Scottish Health Council

• Royal Pharmaceuticals Society

• Royal Collage Psychiatrists

• Children and Young People’s Health

• Support Group

• B-EAT in Scotland

• British Medical Association

• National Health Service

• University of Stirling

• Scottish Youth Parliament

• Rathbone UK

• Notra Dame High School

• Springburn Academy

• Cardinal Newman High School

• Castlemilk High School

• Linwood High School

• Jordanhill School

Young Scot

Young Scot is the national youth information and citizenship charity providing young people aged 11-25 with a mixture of information, ideas and incentives to help them become confident, informed and active citizens. Young Scot’s Co-design Team supported the team throughout their investigation.

Co-design

Young people have a significant role to play in encouraging organisations and communities to adopt a more collaborative culture, focusing resources to effectively meet the needs of individuals and communities. To support this, Young Scot’s co-design service involves young people systematically in creating, designing and delivering solutions in collaboration with organisations.