NHS Walsall identified the need to develop a Children’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing strategy for Walsall to ensure partners and stakeholders have clarity over their roles, responsibilities and pathways to appropriate support and care for young people.  The involvement of young people in this process was deemed essential to ensure that the strategy was developed in an informed way.

Wolverhampton based company ‘Urban Voice’ was commissioned to deliver the drama aspect of the consultation and Stoke based company ‘Cultural Sisters’ was commissioned to deliver the visual arts aspect of the consultation.  Both companies worked with thirty young people from ten Walsall schools (years 5/6 and from years 8/10), including one special school.  ‘Catcher Media’ a digital video production and media arts company who have vast experience of working with young people were commissioned to take the role of documentation artist.

The consultation took place over a period of two days.  The first day entitled ‘Awareness Day’ was conceived to raise children and young people’s knowledge and awareness of Wellbeing in order to enable the Consultation Day to be carried out in an informed way.  The ‘Awareness Day’ focused on the key question ‘What is Wellbeing?’, the artists (Urban Voice and Cultural Sisters) creatively explored this question with the children and young people, Sally Ann Sutton, Young People’s Health Advisor – Emotional Health and Wellbeing, from Walsall NHS Community Health was also involved with the delivery of this half day workshop and met with Creative Development Team and the artists prior to the session to discuss the content of the session. Creative Development Team documented the proceedings of the event by making notes and taking photographs

The second day entitled ‘Consultation Day’ took place within a wider stakeholder event where health, education and voluntary sector representatives who work directly with young people within a emotional health and wellbeing context came together to contribute their input into the strategy.

Children and young people engaged in the second day were encouraged and supported to use their knowledge gained from the awareness day to explore the following areas and questions…

• What do you do to promote your own wellbeing?
• What works for you? Why does it work? Where do you go? (Family / friends, School, Out of school)

• What are the gaps – What would you like?  What could work for you?  Where would you like to go? Who would you like to go to? When would you go?

Catcher Media were involved throughout the day acting as a documentation artist.  The documentation was an important part of the day and provided a resource of findings and processes which were considered in the development of the new strategy.  Catcher Media were also be involved in the consultation process by asking the children, young people and the adults (who were engaged in separate consultation exercises) questions in breaks and over lunch.

“It’s good because they are asking our opinion and not just the adults’

Young person – participant

“The focus isn’t on them it’s on the thing that they are making, which is about themselves but it acts as a distraction.  It’s a much healthier open way to get their issues across about mental health and wellbeing’

Deb – Cultural Sisters

“It’s easier to put it on paper than to say it out loud”

Young person – participant

Catcher Media developed a short documentation film of the day’s events including images from the awareness day, capturing the session’s activity and the ‘children and young people’s voice’ (ideas, thoughts, suggestions) from both sessions and also included footage of the questions they directly asked the participants.  This information was initially fed back to the ‘strategic’ group at the end of the ‘Consultation Day’ to provide a snapshot of the findings of the children and young people’s consultation session and was further edited to provide a resource to attach to the strategy document.