Our first face-to-face meeting brings focus to the project

As government guidelines on Covid have slowly relaxed, we’ve been waiting to meet our Young Listeners in person.  That time finally came at the start of July, when we met three of our Young Listeners in the open-air barn in Taunton’s Longrun Meadow, while another two joined us on Zoom.

We recapped on previous sessions and began to talk about the areas of health and social care that they want to focus on and what questions they want to ask young people.

I was very impressed with their recall of the work we’ve done so far and their ability to respond to my questions, which shows just how dedicated and enthusiastic these young people are.  We had some in-depth discussions on topics that we weren’t able to have over Zoom, and once again it was great to see their deeper levels of knowledge, and how their confidence has grown within the group.

As the group are of secondary school age, they decided to centre their research and ‘listenings’ around the school setting.  They want to focus on improving the school system’s effect on how young people interact with the health and social care system in Somerset.  Within this broad focus, a few subtopics were raised, including the LGBTQ+ community and the issues they face, mental health and wellbeing support, including eating disorders, and access to GPs.

From the discussions we had and the questions our Young Listeners devised, I have no doubt that their listenings will lead to some excellent feedback from the young people they speak to.  And, through sharing their findings with the right audiences, I’m sure we will start to see some positive change in the way that schools interact with health and social care systems for the benefit of young people.

We are looking forward to our next face-to-face meeting with the Young Listeners who weren’t able to join us, and then, very soon, we will start listening to the views and experiences of other young people.

So, if you know young people with something to say about any of the issues we’re exploring, or you just want someone to talk to about your experience with a health or social care service, our Healthwatch Somerset Young Listeners are here to help.