To ensure the voices of Wandsworth people are fed into south west London wide projects allowing them to influence decisions at all levels within the NHS, we work with the South West London Health and Care Partnership team to deliver on projects. Reports are published on the SW London website, to view the reports of our partnership projects, click on the links below.
Joint projects delivered include;
Children and young people - from addressing self-harm to developing emotional resilience
We know that across South West London (SWL) we have a high number of children who are self-harming, and we want both to address and prevent this by developing consistent wellbeing support and early intervention.
We aim to reduce the number of children self-harming in South West London through a ‘whole system’, multi-agency approach, using health, education and local authority resources to provide support in schools to parents and carers and children and young people.
Merton CCG, as part of the South West London Health and Care Partnership, works closely with a cluster of schools in the borough to introduce enhanced support for emotional wellbeing. We have also secured funding to establish an innovative ‘trailblazer’ programme to pilot new approaches to working with children and young people to support them to develop resilience and to get easy and rapid access to specialist help if they need it.
Our work is informed by the views and experiences of children, young people, parents and carers, and will continue to be built on this foundation as we take forward this important programme.
Aims of involvement and underpinning principles
The aim of partners is to go beyond statutory duties to involve patients, service users and the public and to embed co-productive ways of working at the heart of this programme. This means a commitment to working together and in partnership with children, young people, parents and carers in ways that value people as assets, build self-supporting networks and develop collectively owned solutions. The challenge is to create the right opportunities for young people, parents and carers to share their experiences, ideas and aspirations to shape future service design, delivery and review.
Partners' are committing to two key engagement principles in the shared Memorandum of Understanding:
'We will enable the students voice to influence decisions' and
'We commit to working with parents and carers to supporting emotional wellbeing of children and young persons'
The following sub-principles will support this:
| Involvement will be | This would include (not an exhaustive list) |
| Purposeful | Focus of involvement clear
Scope to influence plans, proposals or decisions
Target groups identified at outset
Building on existing information, data, insights and previous engagement |
| Timely | People are involved early
Adequate time for people to consider and contribute in informed way
Ongoing – focus of dialogue changes of time |
| Transparent | Opportunities to participate promoted and publicised
Sufficient information to enable people to participate
Limitations and constraints shared |
| Inclusive | Information accessible and easy to understand
Approaches tailored to participants
Effort to reach diverse groups
Barriers and support needs identified and addressed (eg training/access) |
| Collaborative | Built on existing relationships
Coordinated with partners and across partnerships where possible, jointly where possible
People who use services partners in service design |
| Resourced | Staffing and other costs are identified and available
Appropriate use of public funds (time and money)
Cost-effective
Approach proportionate and affordable |
| Accountable | Evidence of engagement informing decisions
Reasons for decisions made clear
Feedback on results of involvement
Assurance and scrutiny
|
How have we involved children, young people, parents and carers?
In the summer of 2018 we engaged children and young people and parents and carers, as well as teachers and schools in Merton and across south west London to examine root causes of self-harm and poor emotional wellbeing, as well as to test a number of potential solutions. We accessed children and young people primarily through voluntary sector organisations and schools. We ran 2 meetings and had 256 responses to our online survey.
Read the ideas generated in the feedback report and summary easy read feedback report
How have we responded so far?
In response to what we heard we have:
- Narrowed down our long-list of possible interventions to a shorter list that children, young people, parents, carers and teachers told us would work for them.
- Developed a diverse model of support that is based outside of a medical environment – in schools – and that includes one-to-one and group sessions for children and young people, online self-help and counselling, an online directory of services and education/training programmes for parents and teachers
- Secured funding to deliver some innovative ways to deliver emotional wellbeing initiatives through schools, using newly trained mental health support workers who will be based in schools.
What happens next?
The involvement of children and young people will be critical as we put our plans into practice, and we have developed a framework for involvement to ensure that at every opportunity we take action to ensure that the voice of children, young people, parents and carers is built in to our work – in needs assessment, in service design, in service delivery, in monitoring the quality of the services we provide and in our assurance processes.
