We Care. Why Should You? By Daniel O'Donnell

Daniel O'Donnell (Peer Researcher) on behalf of the Mindset Revolution young people

What is Mindset Revolution? What the young people in the team think

Mindset Revolution is a project focusing on Youth Voice – we believe that, as young people in the healthcare system, we should have a voice and a part in shaping that system. This is a form of participatory democracy or a ‘coproduction’ approach. But as young people ourselves, it’s in our interests to hold that opinion, so that bears the question: “We care about Youth Voice, why should you?”

That is the main point of this project. First, to reflect on the life experiences we want to speak out about and our experiences of youth voice and speaking up (through our podcasts). Second, to reflect on creative and novel methods of youth voice (through our online platform and digital participatory process, our Legislative Theatre production, and our participatory research/evaluative work) to establish a solid evidence base that youth voice is worth getting involved in. This is something that all of us share a passion for, speaking up and speaking out for better conditions for young people in the mental health system and providing spaces and opportunities for others to add to that chorus. While excellent work has been done and new work is being done to improve the issues the system has, it’s definitely not there yet. More work is needed, more voices are wanted, and more investment is vital to keeping this revolution turning and to creating genuine, meaningful change that betters the system for the many young people struggling through life and a system that needs to be better tailored to their needs. Projects like this one will prove that youth voice is important, that suitable platforms are necessary, and that everyone should care about youth voice.

This blog looks at the experiences and viewpoints around this project, both positive and negative, of the three teams involved: The Digital Participation group, the Legislative Theatre group, and the Research group.

The Research group's reflections

As a member of the research group, the core of our part of this project was in taking an ‘evolutionary and exploratory approach’. This meant a qualitative, open-ended way of working that allowed us to move with new information and to explore answers as they came to get a deeper understanding of their implications and meaning. This has been a benefit to ourselves and the project. Data-collection has driven the work forward, meaning that we’re following where young people lead and giving our results a clearer foundation. This has also allowed for new scope – for example, our podcast came out of the research group’s discussions on why youth voice mattered and was not part of the original planning. Working on that podcast has led to some valuable discussions (which were highlighted by many members of the research group as one of the more valued aspects of the work, allowing for learning from and connecting with people of different experiences) and some developing skills – the editing, scripting, and recording was all done by us.

And we were paid for our work! This was a benefit practically (as paid work is useful in many ways) and ethically (as it really reinforced the democratic values and principles of this project to put all members of the team on the same footing). There was also flexibility in this, as it allowed people with more time and input to earn more as they put more into the project. Your work directly translated into a return, and this visible consequence to contribution is highly appealing and motivating to young people accustomed to a system where bureaucracy obfuscates much of the work being done. Work that visibly lives its values is more appealing to young people, who are largely disenfranchised and cynical.

Similarly, the method itself is intensely flexible for us too. Young People are often busy and have many demands that they can struggle to keep up with (school, work, mental health needs, family or cultural demands, identity-based concerns, etc) and that means that people aren’t always able to attend every session. Because of our partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, many of our team are active students and so exams and assignment deadlines were a major concern. They needed the time to meet those academic obligations. Our exploratory approach gives the room for that to happen when needed. However, people missing sessions leads to people missing details and some have come back after necessary time off to a very different stage of the work. This was intensely overwhelming and disorienting for them and catching people up has caused us delays. There have been some issues with this approach – exploratory methods are not commonly used and so can be unfamiliar to people used to more structured approaches traditionally taken by organisations. Partnership work often involves reporting and planning, but as an evolved approach, this was difficult – partners at times didn’t know what we were doing next because we didn’t know either. For third sector partners who are involved generally but not daily, this can feel disorienting and insufficient compared to what they’re used to.

Within the project itself, the looser structure meant less clarity on division of work and responsibilities and really highlighted the importance of communication for this work – it was an issue for some of us. We worked through weekly email and a WhatsApp group alongside our weekly in-person meetings, but this comms wasn’t always clear or easily accessible for everyone, which meant that response times varied and communication was a challenge. A young person raised the concern that many young people are already spread thin across many WhatsApp groups and many different digital conversations and how this can lead to confusion and further overwhelm those who are trying to catch up. Necessary links get lost in the spam of messages and it can be hard to follow up later on. Communication was unclear at times and so the work sometimes became unclear.

All of this ties together in a larger issue that was raised: namely, that time was limited on this project. Due to funding, we meet once a week and only have about nine months runtime to deliver our project. This meant that some work had to happen outside the two-hour weekly sessions (putting further pressure on our communication infrastructure). In future work, we hope to see a longer time-scale and more regular touchpoints to help connect the team more and to facilitate a more efficient working environment.

The Digital Participation group’s reflections

One thing the Digital Team highlighted was the open nature of discussions they had. While working on the online platform, they were able to see their work laid out in front of them and talk openly with one another about any issues and share opinions. The shared vision and shared effort and passion they had for their work was a strong ‘pro’ for them.

They also brought up similar topics to the research team, namely the flexibility of the work and some concerns over communication, as people can be unresponsive to emails and WhatsApp comms. One young person pointed out that all the members of the group have lives and that the beauty of the project is that flexibility that allows them to get more or less engaged as they’re able to do – they also acknowledged that when a group isn’t engaged, this can cause delays in the work. Outside of sessions, communication was also difficult for them – this again highlights the necessity of ongoing connectivity within this kind of work, so we’re figuring out how to get there.

This kind of work is innovative and new and does take some getting used to. This was highlighted again by the Digital Participation group as something this project did well and did thoroughly. The flexibility and wide scope (‘incorporating a wide range of things’) that the project has was heavily approved of – a pioneering approach that really gave a novel perspective on both people’s collective experiences and the methodologies of obtaining and integrating them. The Digital Participation group found this greatly beneficial to producing a platform that represented and showcased young people and youth-made resources.

The Legislative Theatre group’s reflections

The Legislative Theatre group reflected a lot on their method – which is one of the most innovative things about the project, as they pointed out. Legislative Theatre is so different to anything else they’ve experienced, and they found that very exciting. This held for them even within the method as they moved from participants to facilitators and got that view ‘behind the curtain’ to see how things they’d seen as participants worked.

Their reflections focused on how Legislative Theatre emphasises looking at the familiar in new ways to come up with collaborative solutions, including how the handling of the games they played as icebreakers integrates into the larger concept of Legislative Theatre in disorienting people to allow for new perspectives. This, they said, made it even more important to focus on how you worked because that disorientation meant you needed to bring people along with you or risk them being left behind.

They learned well from this experience and training, gaining more skills around facilitation and insight into their own styles and strengths that they can take on to new roles and pieces of work. Adaptability is a major part of Legislative Theatre, so they’ll be able to adapt and improve for the future.

Concluding thoughts

Mindset Revolution as a project has been a deeply interesting experience and has provided a lot of learning for the young people involved - we have shared our experiences and heard those of others, developed our skills, and seen a concrete example of how values can be implemented in practical research. Some new passions and interests have even been developed by the young people. While there have been valid concerns raised, those concerns are always being reflected on and dealt with, as part of our learning process. The project and the young people involved will be stronger for these stumbles, ensuring we will have a meaningful contribution to the development of youth voice. We are showing that youth voice is important and that these methods work. We hope that this evidence base showing a concrete benefit to youth voice will lead to further practical developments in the field, whether finding better ways to tailor offers to young people and their needs (even down to the physical, social, and meaning-related factors of any platforming efforts) or even developing new methods entirely. A creative and exciting approach can make the boring bureaucracy of getting involved enticing to young people. But what we really hope for, if nothing else, is to really drive home our message – that our mental health mindset needs a revolution.