It's time to be heard - Youth voices in healthcare

Aim

To establish a MSH youth (15-24 years) structure that engages young people in meaningful partnerships to support the planning, design, delivery, measurement, and evaluation of healthcare services.

Outcomes

• Best practise youth engagement to guide the establishment of MSH Youth Advisory Program.
• An organisation commitment and financial investment to the sustainable development of a MSH Youth Advisory Program.

Background

Partnering with consumers in healthcare is now widely accepted and mandated in Australia. MSH has established a diverse and inclusive MSH Consumer Partner Network of over 150 consumers, who directly partner in governance/ decision making structures, quality improvement projects and research.

National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standard 2.11(b) requires partnerships to reflect the diversity of consumers who use the service or, where relevant, the diversity of the local community. Although 13% of residents are aged 15-24 years (0.7% above QLD average, 1.2% above Australian average) the current MSH Consumer Partner Network only had 3% youth representation. MSH did not have a system in place for young people (15-24 years) to have a say in the planning, delivery, measurement, and evaluation of service.

For young people, their health burden differs to other population groups. Issues such as mental health, sexual and reproductive health, substance abuse, accident and injuries, obesity and immunisation are the most frequently reported health issues (AIWH 2021a). Youth is a key transition in life and can ignite new solution thinking.

Following the identification of the need to establish a MSH Youth Advisory Council in the MSH Consumer and Community Engagement (CCE) Strategy (2023-2026) a working group was established to undertake a project to identify the model that would best meet MSH needs.

Discussion

Key enablers for MSH Youth Advisory Program success include

• Executive Leadership support
• Establishing a high functioning working group
• Development of Youth Engagement Best practise recommendations
• Extensive consult, collaborate and co-design IAP2 engagement methods delivered project success, using MSH Improvement Framework (Project Management approach)
• Securing funding to effectively implement in ensure program sustainability & ability to implement best practise learnings.
• Endorsed Governance of program

Lessons learnt:

• Embedding Consumers as equal part of working group membership ensures the voice of young people is considered, listened to and acted upon throughout entire project.
• Engaging young people, consumers, staff and executives that are impacted by the problem will assist in sustaining solutions, ensuring engagement methods are appropriate to target audience. e.g., Youth engagement requires a different engagement approach
• Applying a strong consumer & community engagement approach to using MSH Improvement Framework (Project Management), builds traction and momentum within the organisation
• Sustainable solutions take time

What would we do differently?

• Lived Experience Youth Insight Workshop - Dropout rate on the day for this cohort of participants was 50% despite agreement from all to engage. This is representative of the busy lives young people face daily. Juggling ongoing health challenges, regular health appointments, maintaining employment, education or both and managing social commitments and family commitments. This online workshop was during working hours. Our best practise recommendations suggest 'out of hours' meetings, weekends, or school holidays work best when engaging this co-hort. Into the future youth engagement such as MSH Youth Advisory Council will be held out of hours during 5:30-7:30pm and consider MSH Youth Forum during school/university holiday periods.

Scale and Spread Opportunities

The MSH Youth Advisory Program, could be adopted in all QLD HHS’s. Technological integration would be key to regional HHS’s applying this model for Youth Engagement.

Next steps?

MSH Youth Advisory Council establishment including the development of a purposive, co-designed recruitment campaign, capitalising on pre-existing relationships and organisations engaged by MSH youth Advisory Working Group

Future process measures of success will be co-designed with youth council members:

• Terms of reference, targets, and measures will include:
• 12-month evaluation of MSH Youth Advisory Council
• MSH Consumer Partner Network youth representation increases from 3% to 13% in line with regions demographic profile
• Youth engagement output recorded in the development of strategies, plans and projects, capital works, model of care redesigns, quality improvements & research. Youth council to co-design engagement targets
• Evaluate effectiveness of new workforce pathway 'Youth Identified position'

Empower youth members and Youth Identified position to plan MSH Youth Forum (2026), creating ownership, enabling skills capacity building and gaining health event planning skills.

References

1. Brandenburg. C, Review of the literature on engaging youth consumers (15-25years) in health services, Centre for Functioning and Health Research, Metro South Health, June 2024.