Ellie Milner, Chair of the Young Persons’ Advisory Group (YPAG) at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and a patient governor, looks at how the NHS Constitution can be made relevant to young people
The NHS Constitution demonstrates the values of the standard of care I, as a current service user, should be receiving. Having a long-term respiratory problem, I have been a regular inpatient since I was 7 years old. Now 19, I regularly clock up over 20 admissions a year and have learned that there is a definite need to stand up for my rights.
Following YPAG’s contribution to previous Future Forum work, we were given the chance to discuss the NHS Constitution and how ‘young-people friendly’ it is. The conclusion we came to? It’s not ‘young-people friendly’ at all! If it isn’t young-people friendly, perhaps it is not easy for the rest of the public to understand either.
Many of the young people had the hefty job of sitting round a table and evaluating how the NHS Constitution affects young people and how it can be more understandable. The general consensus was that it is just as important for young people as it is for any other service user – however, it is just not understandable.
Once the Constitution was explained, I realised how important it was for me as a regular service user. It highlighted issues that I hadn’t thought of before and made me realise that, although I was a young person, I was still entitled to the same rights as any other adult. I will certainly be letting those that care for me know that I am aware of my rights and of the NHS Constitution.
Our video sums up the discussions we had:
The video sparked a great deal of debate and we feel that our ideas were taken on board by Future Forum chair Professor Steve Field and by Dr Diwakar, Medical Director of Birmingham Children’s Hospital and member of the Future Forum Group.
Aside from it not being young-person friendly, there are three key messages that YPAG wished to convey:
- As it stands the NHS Constitution is boring: there are too many areas that repeat themselves which makes it very dull to read. The whole document needs to be much more concise.
- It is only targeted towards educated adults: the way in which the NHS Constitution is worded excludes many from reading and understanding documents, such as young people and people with learning disabilities. Yet the aim of the document is to ensure that everybody knows their rights – no matter what their background.
- There needs to be more signposting about what parts are relevant to certain groups of people: it would be helpful to either have specific documents for staff, elderly people, regular service users, young people and those with learning disabilities or to just highlight which points are relevant to each group.
We feel that there needs to be a document specifically written for young people – which YPAG would love to help to write. This document needs to explain to young people their rights and how to use them.
The NHS Constitution needs to reach more than the quarter of the public that currently know about it as it. Maybe young people could launch the newly written documents with the Prime Minister or Secretary of State?! This would hopefully spark more interest as, although stereotyping suggests otherwise, many young people have a keen interest in the NHS and their future.
My question to you is: we are aware that young people need to know their rights which are detailed in the NHS Constitution, but how can we reach them if they are not regular service users?