Young people in Norfolk have been helping to develop an app which supports them with mental health appointments.
Members of the Particip8 group at the Norfolk and Suffolk Mental Health Trust (NSFT) worked with experts at Xploro to encourage young people to share their experiences of mental health.
The app aims to help young people with a medical condition understand what is happening to them, who they might meet, and what to expect at appointments.
It is currently aimed at 7 to 15 year olds but there are ambitions to expand it to a wider age range and include a version specifically around mental health appointments.
What help did they give?
Xploro ran online workshops to engage young people and their parents/guardians to find out what would make them:
- feel less anxious about an appointment..
- ways to encourage a wider age range of under-25s to use it
- what they felt about the look, content, and language used on the app.
The workshops and online questionnaires, completed with Birmingham Children’s Hospital, were used to develop a list of recommendations (Mental Health Discovery Recommendation Report).
That report will be shared with the young people involved.
Ideas included:
- Making appointments easier to book.
- Creating a tracker for reminders and information and giving information about the practicalities of the appointment, including an “environments” feature.
- A video tool to show what a typical appointment might look like.
There was also a suggestion to use the App to introduce key workers, and a “storymaker” feature so young people only have to tell and map their story once.
Sophie Davies, people participation lead for young people and families at NSFT, said:
“It has been really exciting to be part of this work and see how the input of young people has helped to develop something which will be used to help so many others. The young people in the focus group felt this development would be a really helpful addition to the app, which is something they would love to see used more widely in future.”
NSFT chief nurse Anthony Deery said he welcomed any initiative which would help young people with anxiety to feel more relaxed around mental health appointments.
“It is great that young people using our services have been involved in this important project to improve how their peers access mental health appointments. We are keen to support young people and make our organisation safer, kinder and better for them.”
