Our Aisha delivered a speech about her life experiences with health and social care at the Oldham Cares event. She told her story of how young people in care may or may not be ready but have to move on and live independently as they are 18 and classed an adult. Aisha spoke about the current issue with mental health services and how hard the transition from children’s service to adult service is. She spoke about the challenges all young people face and how everyone could support them. In addition, Aisha put forward some suggestions from other young people in care on 10 top tips for health care professionals to remember, when working with young people. These are:
- Listen to what young people have to say irrespective of their age.
- Ask about our general health and well being.
- Ensure our medical records are up to date and forward to the correct practice.
- Ensure we have easy access to appointments seeing the same doctors (rather than locum) as much as possible to help us build up rapport, relationship and trust.
- Make sure we are involved in our care and given the opportunity to be open and frank with our GP.
- Don’t make assumptions based on our history.
- Ask if there is anything we would like to discuss rather than just dealing with the problem we first present with.
- Support and help us to make decisions about our care and include us.
- Direct your questions to us, not the person who is supporting us.
- Support us to access the health support we need to maintain healthy lifestyles.
Pass on and share with other health professionals young people’s tips in trying to help our young people overcome some of the barriers they face when accessing health care services.
Well done to Aisha for doing such a fantastic speech.
