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CQC Young Champions: How Young People are Shaping CQC’s Future
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CQC’s Young Champions come together from across England to discuss key issues affecting young people in health and social care.
Care Quality Commission (CQC) Young Champions are a diverse group of young people who work to hear and amplify the voices of young people in health and social care, and to inform CQC’s work.
Last week, the Young Champions were invited to meet at an in-person event and to share their views on access to mental health services, support in transitioning from child to adult services, and what safe and effective care looks like for young people.
CQC produced a series of videos to show the Young Champion how their insights are shaping CQC’s work and thanked them for their passion for improving and social care for children and young people across the country.
The event was also attended by representatives from CQC, Participation People and Choice Support.
Hearing Young Voices
The event enabled the Young Champions to work creatively and collaboratively to share their own and others’ experiences of using health and social care services.
Key themes were identified and fed to CQC, including the importance of healthcare professionals understanding young peoples’ experiences and perspectives, how communication between different services needs to improve and the difficulties that young people may experience in navigating adult healthcare services.
Feedback was solution-focused and youth-led, and the Young Champions took charge of CQC’s social media channels for the day to help CQC connect with young people.
Informing CQC’s State of Care Report 2023
Young people’s views and insights will contribute to CQC’s State of Care report 2023, which is currently being written.
Following the launch of the Young Champions programme in October, CQC have received over 150 responses from young people to inform the report. 2 in 5 young people reported experiencing mental health problems within the last 18 months, with social media being cited as a major cause. Respondents said that their diet and physical health had also deteriorated as a result of poor mental health.
The most commonly experienced barrier to healthcare for young people was wait lists, particularly for mental health services.
CQC’s State of Care report is due to be published at the end of October this year.
Championing Change: A Toolkit
The Young Champions are now developing a toolkit for youth engagement, which will serve as a guide for young people to be able to operate independently to gather views from their own communities.
At the event, the Young Champions explored what they would like to see in the toolkit, including visuals, activities, quotes from young people, ways to avoid jargon, and incentives.
It’s brilliant to get young people connecting in person. They always bring so much and they’ve challenged me to be better at giving young people even more space by facilitating these in-person events James Rimmer, Programme Manager: Universal, Participation People
