Virtual YPAG session March 2021
Written by Vanessa Bennett
Reviewed and edited by Caitlin Brookes and Amelia Crook (NeurOX YPAG members)
Young researchers from the NeurOX YPAG met on-line again in March. This workshop involved two sessions which are summarised in these links:
- Understanding how young people want to communicate about their mental health
- The BeGOOD Early Intervention Ethics (EIE) research programme
The young researchers noted that the adult-free spaces gave them a fairly free reign to decide where their conversation took them and how much they wanted to participate in answering some broad questions! They had seemingly vibrant discussions and recorded their responses on Padlets with support from an older YPAG co-facilitator in each group. As a researcher leading the group over the past 18 months, and being involved in over 20 workshops with many of these young people, I could really see the difference through the boldness and breadth of responses. We very briefly discussed a few key points between the breakouts. Being outside of the ‘room’ make writing it up a little nervy. However, a few YPAG members helped summarise and theme their discussions and also reviewed this to see if I had accurately represented their voices too.
Just to add a note of caution – it’s important to have trusting relationships between peers and the researchers to form a more comfortable environment. A safeguarding protocol and good preparation are obviously important to be able to establish a safe working relationship, particularly when broaching highly emotive and potentially triggering topics. We created some information here, that you can tweak to your own situation: https://oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/patient-and-public-involvement/young-peoples-involvement/research-on-sensitive-topics-briefing-for-researchers/
Now I’m becoming a little fatigued with Padlets (and I’m sure the YPAG may be too), so for the next session we’ll be looking at how to use them differently or find more creative easy-to-use communication tools to help young people express themselves freely and mix it up a little!
To find out more about the NeurOX YPAG and the involvement work we’ve been doing together, take a look here:
https://oxneurosec.com/projects/begood/ and https://oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/patient-and-public-involvement/young-peoples-involvement/
These are the virtual projects members of the NeurOX YPAG have been involved in over the past year:
https://oxfordhealthbrc.nihr.ac.uk/celebrating-a-year-of-involving-young-people-with-research/
