What we are learning from Young People in Islington
My colleagues and I have been blogging about our work with NHS Digital and the Widening Digital Participation programme that we will be involved in for the next 3 years.
We have been running workshops for Users and Stakeholders — As Tim explains here — to understand what the User Need is and to co-design models that meet those needs.
My favourite session so far was in Islington with twenty 13–18 year olds. This particular pathfinder is based around Young People and their mental health. For 3 hours they pushed us, challenged us and were open and mature enough to let us into their world. Their candour was inspiring and erudite and, as a result, we got some incredible insight.
My personal highlights…
- We all need privacy and our records are ours, who shares them should be up to us. Here there was no suspicion of digital being ‘secure’ it was a more obvious concern. ‘People look over your shoulder on laptops, no one gets my mobile.’ Any digital health intervention needs to be designed for mobiles.
- Information needs to be relevant to the individual, appropriately sized and available at a time that is suitable for them. This happens to be exactly the same need that fell out of a workshop in Stoke-on-Trent (which was attended by people, for the most part, over 50 and centred on Long Term Health conditions). ‘Any health stuff we look at is so generic I just turn it off’
- And my favourite quote of the whole programme so far…. ‘The person who knows you doesn’t have the knowledge and the person who has the knowledge doesn’t know you.’
This particular quote opened many more lines of enquiry. These young people often find authoritative figures like teachers, parents, social workers etc to be unapproachable and not able to understand their lives. These young people were much more likely to trust a ‘like’ by a peer than a recommendation by an adult. This is something that the pathfinder needs to recognise and work within.
I’m really looking forward to working with this group and their peers over the coming year. I will keep you up to date with how we collate all of the needs and co-design a model to test.
Not all of the insights are nice to hear…
‘Facebook? That’s before my time, my Mum and her friends go on there. I wouldn’t!’
