The Full Circle Service

1. The Full Circle Service By Rik, Kyle, David and Thomas, Young people from the M.A.L.A.P and Listening to Children Groups at Investing In Children

2. Who we are • We are young people from the Multi Agency Looked After Partnership (M.A.L.A.P) and the Listening to Children Reference Groups. We try to find out the views and opinions of children and young people in Durham and pass them on to the people who can make changes. • We work alongside Investing In Children. Investing In Children is a human rights organisation. They promote the rights of children and young people. Investing In Children introduces children and young people to new experiences and gives them the opportunity to have their voices heard. Most importantly, they encourage and help support services to implement the changes that are being asked for.

3. Why we’re here? • Durham’ s Children and Young People Service asked us to be part of the planning and development of a new mental health service. They told us this would be for looked after children and young people and care leavers and for those who are involved with Children in Need Teams. (Children and young people who live with foster carers, in a children’s home or who have a social worker.) • We did this by asking children and young people for their views and opinions. We asked about a need for a new service, different to the ones they can currently access. We then worked with the team to make sure these views were heard.

4. Why the need for a new service? WE were given lots of reasons why there should be a new service, some of these were: • Some children and young people had been waiting too long for appointments • They were not getting the help they needed. • Sometimes they didn’t know who to talk too or where to go when they felt lonely, concerned or depressed.

5. Why are the views of young people important in the development of the new service? • The views and opinions of children and young people are important in the development of the service because they know what they would like from the service. It was important that it wasn’t all adult led. Children and young people are experts in their own lives.

6. How we found out the views and opinions of young people? • We felt Agenda Days were the best way to collect the views and opinions of young people in a safe adult free environment. We invited lots of children and young people to come along to talk to us. We acted as facilitators. This allowed for free discussion without adult influence.

7. What did we find out from children and young people? We found out children and young people would like: • Information on the service. • A service that is central and easy to find • Staff who are friendly, reliable and Knowledgeable. • Young people said they would not want to meet in school because this would make them feel anxious. • The most important thing we found out was young people would like a service that could be accessible 24 hours a day. Help and support when they need it.

8. What we did with information we collected? • We used all the views and opinions of the children and young people we spoke to and compiled a report. • In the report we made a lot of recommendations about what a new service should be like. • Once the report was finished we emailed a copy to the team. They came back to our Reference Group to talk about how our work will influence the service. • We fed back to other children and young people in an article in our “Listen to Us for a Change” newsletter.

9. What will happen next? • Some of the things children and young people have asked for and the new ways of working, have become part of the new Full Circle Service • Young people will be part of the stakeholder group so they will be involved in decisions about the service. • Young people will be involved in the monitoring of the service. • Other issues like a 24 hour service have been highlighted to all mental health services. Hopefully this will be talked about further. In the mean time, information is being made available to children and young people about other services that are there 24 hours a day.

10. Research • We would now like to tell more about how we do the research and how we run Agenda Days