Wandsworth Youth Council have published their mental health report
Young people at the Wandsworth Youth Council (WYC) wanted to find out about mental health amongst their peers.
From September 2021 - January 2022, the Youth Council members designed the Mental Health survey: Happier Wandsworth. The survey was shared with the children and young people of Wandsworth to discover their thoughts, feelings and lived experiences of mental health. They heard from 53 young people aged 11 - 19 years old from across Wandsworth and local surrounding areas, with 82.7% of respondents being students in years 7 and 8.
Delia Fitzsimmons and Rita Haspel from Healthwatch Wandsworth facilitated a workshop to help the Youth Council members learn how to analyse the data they had collected and guide them in starting to write their report. They asked the young people to focus on two questions from their data and worked with them to analyse the data and spot emerging themes. WYC members then used those themes to form findings and identify actions and recommendations from the data. The young people of WYC felt Healthwatch’s involvement helped their project, saying:
"Thank you so much for taking the time to come tonight, it was really useful and a great way to show the Young People the next steps they are going to need to take!"
Through this project and the writing of the report, the young people of WYC discovered that the young people of Wandsworth do not feel they are listened to enough, and that this negatively impacts their mental health and wellbeing. They felt least listened to by local authorities and most listened to by friends and family. WYC was also able to see that feeling stress is a bigger issue than loneliness to the young people who responded to the survey.
Additionally, young people do not trust the current Mental Health services enough. They feel that there is room for improvement, and not being listened to has had negative impacts such as feeling isolated, stressed and invalidated.
Downloads
The data from the responses have helped decide the next focus for WYC and their mental health campaign: they will be reviewing some of the health services in Wandsworth.
They have partnered up with representatives from Richmond and Wandsworth Councils to review the Well Centre, a health hub for young people. This service was recommended by one of the Youth Council members, so they are very excited to be involved in this project.
Read the full report below
