Who: Welsh Government policy team in the Health, Social Care and Early Years group.
The brief: To carry out engagement with young people up to the age of 25, during the formal consultation period on the draft Suicide and Self-harm Prevention Strategy (2024-2034), to ensure that the voice of young people was included in the responses.
What I did:
- I attended online training on suicide and self-harm to understand the topics and background data, and how to address these topics sensitively.
- I translated the formal consultation questions into conversation topics for 121 and group workshops.
- I put in place safeguarding measures so that the participants, as well as their supporting adults (parents and youth workers), were safe and cared for in the engagement process.
- I created information sheets in English and in Welsh for the young people and for their supporting adults, with sources of further support (online, by phone, by text, and apps).
- I mapped the communities and interest groups to reach to achieve representation across a variety of backgrounds and situations, and set up 121 and group conversations with a range of children and young people – as well as with some professionals who support children and young people at crisis point (where it wasn’t appropriate for me to speak with young people directly).
- I carried out the conversations online and in person, and wrote up my notes to send to participants for information and verification.
- I compiled the findings into a thematic report for the policy team, matched against the formal consultation questions so that these findings could feed more easily into their overall analysis.
- I transferred the headline findings into a child friendly report, which I had translated, and I sent the English and Welsh language versions out to all the participants.
What they said: The young people who participated appreciated the opportunity to talk about the topic and share their views. The groups and organisations were generally pleased to have been approached and several were keen to remain involved in future developments.
“Thank you so much for sending this across, it really is an amazing piece of work! 🙂 So glad we were able to contribute to it, thank you for reaching out. We would definitely be open to continued involvement.”
“Thank you for the comprehensive report you have sent, there has been a considerable amount of work done here.”
Credit: Welsh Government