Launching the Moorfields Youth Forum: Young Voices Shaping the Future

Importance of Young Voices

Young voices are important due to it giving them a say in the world and having their voices heard. If it's only adults making the decisions, it won't be fair on young people as they are not heard. Having a young voice also gives honest and realistic feedback on services so they know what can be improved, as well as the impact it has on the people around them. For the young person, having their voice heard helps them build skills like confidence, public speaking, friendship, leadership, and so many more amazing skills.

How the Day Began

The day began with a talk about the Youth Forum and why it's important for children's rights, then establishing ground rules by talking about how over time we will develop more as a group of how we want to work with each other. We then did a get to know each other activity where we played a game of “stand up if”, then leading to us talking to the person next to us, learning about them, and then rejoining as a group and talking about what we learnt about them and why they wanted to join the Youth Forum. We then spoke about Moorfields and our experiences to help improve care and how young people feel when attending Moorfields. We spoke about the good things when attending Moorfields, like how it's a day off school, getting treats, and waiting areas being nice with the play team. We then went onto the talks about needs for improvement. Main talks were from the young adult patients talking about the waiting rooms being boring, how some staff could be more compassionate, and the care for young adult services needing to improve. After these discussions, the ribbon cutting took place where we officially cut the ribbon to launch the Youth Forum, which is an amazing milestone for Moorfields.

Oriel Move Discussion

We then moved onto a presentation about the move of hospitals that will be taking place in 2027. We learned about the new hospital, what the layout will be, what it will include, and the plans for the new children's spaces. The changes that will happen were discussed, but it was made sure and highlighted that the care will stay the same and will not change. We spoke about common questions that will be asked about this move, what children may be thinking, as this will be a major change and period of transition for them.

We split off into groups and wrote down our questions we had for the move or what other children and young people might be thinking and how it will be best to answer them. We also discussed wayfinding and what children and young people would want arriving at the new site. We reconnected as one big group and discussed our questions we had about the change, which were answered. All of these questions can then help children or young people who are feeling anxious about the move feel more calm and comfortable with the change to make them have a positive patient experience.

A young person said they found the Oriel session: “really fun, an interesting experience in which I felt listened to and comfortable / treated maturely.”

Ready - Steady – Go - Hello

James came up to talk to us about a questionnaire that has been set up to help with transition for young people when they turn 16 and move over to the adult services. It is important to have a smooth transition, as transition can be quite an overwhelming time period due to the change that is happening, new surroundings, new people, and a new way of care, which can be quite difficult for a young person. So it's important for transition to be talked about in advance and giving them the space to ask questions about their health, transition, and just general questions. We discussed this as a group and gave our feedback on how transition from the paediatric side can be going smoothly, but then from the adult side it can be difficult due to the lack of communication. So with transition there needs to be communication from both sides. All members agreed as a group it was good and important it was put in place, but there were questions of the age it starts at, 11, which many found was too young and believe it should be around 13-14. It was also suggested that they could put in place patient passports which will allow the person who's caring for them to know information that would not be on the record, like preferred way of care, interests, what works well and what doesn't, a way which patients can communicate with their person of care easily without needing to worry verbally communicating it. We then filled in some sheets of questions we'd like to be in the questionnaire for young people to contribute and do them in a way they enjoy doing it.

Patient Experience Framework

The patient experience framework is a document that was made to make Moorfields experiences better for patients. However, only adults were asked about their thoughts and opinions to make it, and no children or young people were asked about their thoughts and opinions for it, which only gives a one-sided opinion. The document includes empathy to understand, dedication to every patient, attention to the details that make a difference, creativity to find solutions, and collaboration to continue improving. We then spoke about whether these made sense or not to children and young people, and if they were related to young people. We agreed that they made sense, however agreed communication was a must-have. Communication is extremely important and sometimes staff aren’t good at communicating with children and young people, and can cause them to feel distressed. As communication is a key feature, it's important to make sure it's understandable for all ages and also disabilities.

Growing Up in a Digital World

Growing up is a hard thing. There's constant changes and expectations, but many people are on social media. They use social media as their key form of communication. We talked about as a group how the government is having talks about banning under 16s off social media. As a group we discussed how under 16s shouldn’t be, but we agreed more young primary school age kids should. However, children in secondary school want to stay in contact with their friends and social media is their key way of contact. Social media has positives like how people make and find communities of people they get along with and are able to relate to. It shares a way of entertainment through communication. A lot of social media apps are key for accessibility and helping support people going through sight loss, finding a community they are able to feel themselves in. There are also massive debates on whether children should be allowed to take their phones to school, but tech with sight loss is a key feature, as technology is a massive part with sight loss and taking that away takes away a disabled person's independence. There are many benefits and risks of technology, but we discussed as a group the positives outweigh the negatives. It benefits everyone in a different way and taking that away will cause a massive effect on everyone. But we did also discuss how the risks of tech could be minimised and we came up with ideas like it should be taught in schools, not only online safety but how to use social media safely, what's wrong and what's right. This should be taught from a young age, companies having stricter safety rules, parents being informed on the dangers of social media and how to manage it when their child has it, as all apps have parent settings where parents can manage their children's social media pages and phones.

The End

To end off our first Youth Forum session, we all came together and discussed our feedback about the day and see if there's any changes that need to be done for forum members to suit them best.