Children and Young People's Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board newsletter: October 2022

Listening to the Voices of Care Experienced People

We all want children and young people to lead happy, healthy lives and to have the right support for their mental health and wellbeing at the right time. The Joint Delivery Board's Task and Finish group 3 is working to improve access to mental health and wellbeing support for Care Experienced children and young people and children and young people in vulnerable situations, with a goal of ensuring they can access the right support when they need it.

The Task and Finish group's work is aligned to the wider work of The Promise, and aims to ensure that improvements in children and young people's mental health and wellbeing are delivered in line with the Promise. The group is taking this work forward by developing key principles for the workforce, building a bank of good and emerging practice for supporting children and young people and developing recommendations for the Board regarding what changes they feel need to be put in place to support the mental health needs of Care Experienced children and children and young people in vulnerable situations. To support this work the group has developed an exciting partnership with Who Cares? Scotland. This partnership has allowed for the development of an engagement plan, designed to put the voices and lived experiences of Care Experienced people at the heart of the group's work.

Group members and Board members came together in May 2022 to listen, connect and engage with the views of Care Experienced people at an event arranged between Task and Finish Group 3 and Who Cares? Scotland. Eleven Care Experienced people participated in the workshop presenting findings from their 'Tend Our Light' report. Two Who Cares? Scotland Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament (MSYPs), Charles Fernando and Oisin King also presented to the group about their motion on mental health services for Care Experienced people.

Reflecting on how it felt to be part of the session Charles said:

"The Joint Delivery Board workshop was a very insightful session with participants from across the mental health sector and care experience landscape. It was informative and the stakeholder input allowed us to capture a range of perspectives and understand key priorities, so we can influence the Scottish Government and provide a better understanding of what needs to improve to support Care Experienced people's mental health."

The group will continue to develop the work and will submit a summary of the work and recommendations to the Board for consideration in December. Ahead of this, the group will hold another engagement session with Who Cares? Scotland members in November 2022 to ensure that they are clear about how their views have fed in to the group's outputs and to ensure that the recommendations being made are in line with the voices of those children and young people who have lived experience.