Coast and Vale Community Action’s Community Research Network, working with Healthwatch North Yorkshire, is helping young people to have their voices heard by supporting ‘Community Connectors’ to talk with their peers to gather and share their views and experiences around health and social care services.

As a Community Connector you can help young people have their voices heard.

You will be directly involved in making a difference for communities by letting us know about the experiences and issues young people have when accessing health and social care services.

Your involvement will help us to raise issues and concerns with those who have the power to make change happen.

CaVCA’s Community Research Network is interested in helping support our local Healthwatch to tackle health inequalities. Health inequalities are the differences in the status of people’s health, but also the care that people receive and the opportunities that they have to lead healthy lives.

Community Connectors can ensure that we reach the voices of those that are seldom heard, by talking to their friends, their peers, local youth groups and other places where young people go – in this way we can all have a voice in shaping the services that matter to us.

NHS England have identified five clinical areas that require improvement to reduce health inequalities in children and young people. This is called Core20PLUS5. Community Connectors will listen to anyone’s experiences of health and social care services but there will be a focus on gathering feedback from people who have experience with the 5 key clinical areas, these are:

Asthma
Diabetes
Epilepsy
Oral health
Mental health

CaVCA has appointed a Co-Ordinator, Zach, who will recruit and support volunteer Community Connectors to engage with young people in a number of ways, including:

Planned engagement activities
Informal engagement activities
Helping to conduct surveys and consultations in the local community.
Helping produce case studies to highlight people’s experiences.
Promoting the ‘Young people’s experience of health in coastal communities’ survey with other young people.

To find out more, contact Zach on zach@cavca.org.uk