Unheard voices: young people in care’s experiences of speaking to doctors

Phone beep.

Lauren:             Hi James.

James:              Hi Lauren. What are we doing today? Why are we on this call?

Lauren:             Well as you know, we’ve been having conversations with young people who are in care or have been in care about their experiences of going to the GP.

James:              That’s right. We spoke with 14 young people between November 2022 and April 2023, on busy days, on rainy days, in noisy places, in different locations. 

                        We had four conversations and we’ve woven them together so that we can hear some of the main things that the young people spoke about.

                        We’ve repeated one of the young people’s comments for clarity.

Lauren:             We’ve invited some professionals to listen in to the conversation and after we’ve heard from the young people, we’ll have a chat with the professionals about what they’ve had to say.

James:              Let’s get into it.

Beep.

Junior:              Hi my name is Junior, I’m here today to talk about primary health care.

Asta:                 Hey my name is Asta.

Grace:              Hello my name is Grace.

Carolina:           My name’s Carolina.

Ish:                   Hi, my name is Ish.

Joffrey:             Hi, my name is Joffrey.  

R:                     My name is R.

Melani:             My name is Melani.

Moesha:           Hello my name is Moesha.

Ty C:                 Hello, my name is Ty C.

Pedro:              Hello, my name is Pedro.

L:                     Hello, my name is L.

B:                     Hi, my name’s B and I’m here today to talk about primary health and support for children in care.

KK:                   Hi, my name is KK. I am here to talk about going to a doctor.

KK:                   I don’t like talking to people I don’t know or trust. I not feel safe.

L:                     Like if an adult’s with you they’ll obviously do the job right but then like if an adult isn’t with you they just might do the job wrong because no one else is around.       

Grace:              I actually don’t want to talk about my private things in front of anyone, like I just want to talk to the doctor but if my foster carer is with me I’m not comfortable even to tell them anything I want.

Asta:                 I’m not sure if I can ask for them to like not be there.     

B:                     I think in a way if the issue or the concern or that private thing that needs to be talked about or I feel I need to relay to someone else needs to be talked about, then I will. I think it will take a little bit more of a push from me physically and mentally as well because you will most likely in that situation your head will go a bit like “mm okay, this is a new person, maybe I’ve met them once or twice before, it’s not the person I wanted but if I need and desire this help then for me my best bet would be you get through the struggle and you get the help you need”.

R:                     Like get to know them more and then once like you feel like you’re ready to like build that trust, then like you let them, tell them certain things that you wouldn’t be comfortable telling a new doctor.

Ish:                   Yeah, with me, I go for monthly injections for treatment, I’ve been having it for the last two years and each time it’s the same doctor. So I feel like we’ve built a bond, like not only do I chat to him about like my treatment and like my health, but I feel like we can talk about personal stuff as well. Yeah, I just feel close with him.  

Junior:              But yeah, I feel like going to the same, if you like them of course, if you didn’t like them then, yeah, you’d probably want a new doctor, but for my experience I feel like, yeah, having a good relationship with your doctor or dentist is definitely needed.

Melani:             I think it is about the doctors giving children chances. Like, for instance, say if it’s the first session and they’re saying, oh this child’s not opening already, I want her to open up, it’s just like you’re kind of pressuring a child to open up, they might not say it to the child’s face, they might just say it to the child’s parents, it might be like 4 or 5 sessions or 10 sessions for the child to open up because maybe that child has trauma of trusting people.        

Ty C:                 It’s not easy to talk about what’s going off in your head sometimes to a professional. It’s more easy to talk about it with like family or someone really close to you because it’s just easier to just open up because they would just know what to say, but it’s obviously their job as a professional to know what to say to you

Ish:                   For me, I feel like it’s a lot harder because I’m a man and like men are supposed to be strong, they’re not meant to show emotion. So I feel like it’s a lot harder for someone like me, like Ty to open up and express ourselves

Grace:               I don’t think they can treat your mental health the same like your physical because mental health is all about your emotions, psychological and social. Imagine, like me I’m living without my family, my parents and then I don’t think sometimes I can live even without my mum, if I go to my doctor, if I told him that I have a problem in my knee, I think that, I believe that they can treat it but not like, they cannot make my mum to come here and then meet her, so it’s easy to tell but I don’t think it’s easy to treat.

Moesha:           I personally wouldn’t like, you know for example, you wouldn’t tell your business to a stranger, why would you tell your business to a doctor, like someone you’re only going to sit there with for like a couple of minutes, like you don’t really know them that well.    

Pedro:              For me personally, honestly, like probably like best friends, stuff like that because you know that they wouldn’t exactly tell anybody. Or your parents or something. Like biological parents not foster carers.

B:                     They’re there for you for the needs at that current moment and that time, unfortunately the help for past traumas and things you are struggling with that have already happened is more difficult to access but it is there. I think doctors just struggle trying to evaluate that and use that to help you push through.       

Carolina:           Um, I don’t think you should go to the doctors to talk about your relationship problems, I think you should go to someone that you actually know better because doctors are just there for what you feel and what like sickness you feel or etc, I don’t think you should go to the doctors for relationship problems.

I wish I could have like talked to my mum like again and again and again because like it’s not even like healthcare for me or my brother, it’s just more healthcare for my mum as well because my mum didn’t get any healthcare whatsoever and I just feel like, I feel like I want to talk to my mum like so much more because I want to tell her everything that has been going on because it’s so hard, like to be living with another person that you don’t know, it’s like you have to take responsibilities for yourself now because you’re not living with your parents, it’s like you can’t say anything like you would tell your parents to and especially it’s really hard as well because you’re seeing other people, like other children like be so happy with their parents when they’re outside as well but just like me personally, I don’t get to do that, so that’s actually really quite hard to see as well, so yeah.

Melani:             Um, I’d probably change the experience I would have faced. Like, for instance, I remember when I was taken, like for instance, I used to have contact with my mum, I would say I wasn’t really allowed to like talk to her as much, like for instance I wish I would have got the chances to talk to her more because I had to talk, I had to, it was like 5 months without talking to my mum so in some ways it’s like, it was kind of like, well I wouldn’t say depressing but it was kind of isolating, I know I had my aunty there and my foster dad there but it wasn’t the same because she’s been there from my childhood so it’s like, it was kind of hard not to see her in some ways, so it’s like if I’ve got to change that I’d probably let myself be happier by letting them know that I wanted to have more contact with my mum.    

I think I should have got some mental and emotional support when I didn’t get to see her, so I feel like in some ways they could have offered me that and I would have had a better experience, so I wouldn’t have felt like I was isolated from, from my family because she was the only family I have, so yeah.   

Junior:              With relationships I feel like your doctor would more or less say, he or she will probably say “I’m probably not the best person to speak to this” and maybe refer you to another health unit, maybe something else because the doctor’s probably the person not to speak about your relationship problems.  

Carolina:           What I wanted to say is like to speak to an actual doctor about your mental health and what you’re actually going through as well, it actually takes a lot of time to actually build up that trust, like how would you know if it’s actually confidential if they’re just going to blabber their mouth out to someone else, for example, your social worker if you have one or your parents or even your siblings or anything, how do you know if you can actually trust that person, so it’s going to be quite hard to build up a relationship with them, like a bond and just be open about it because you don’t know what they’re like, you don’t know what they’re going to do.

Asta:                 It’s like they say it’s confidential until like it gets really bad, like sometimes you don’t know what counts as really bad, so like sometimes you could say something and they might tell your carer, even though you don’t think it’s that bad. So like I don’t know what I can and can’t tell them, like what the limits are.

Carolina:           And they will all say like you’re going through a phase where like it’s like a normal teenage phase, like every teenager has been through this but if you actually go back into the past, for example, of what I’ve been through as well as a young child, then this is not just a phase, this is just a like… It’s like a scar, you know.

Melani:             Or they might say, oh it’s just a teenage thing, you’ll get over it and I feel like, I feel like in some ways you’re just saying that because you’re a grown man, you don’t understand how I feel, like you’re a grown man who’s been helping people for his whole life so why can’t you help me when I’m telling you, when I’m trying to explain, I’m like trying to explain how I feel for once and how you’re not listening to me and you say that you’re here to help people but when I tell you something you’re not listening to me.

Asta:                 This is about a specific experience I’ve had but I wish that my GP would go a little further than just like prescribing me Vitamin D tablets and then telling me that if those don’t work then I’m getting physiotherapy, like I just don’t feel like that’s, you know, like I want to know what’s actually going on.         

Moesha:           I think that doctors and nurses do judge people, they may not say it out loud but I feel like internally they’ll be judging you, they might appear nice but in reality, I think they might be thinking something else, they might appear nice but in their minds like I don’t like this person or I don’t really feel comfortable with this person, they will never say it out loud but like you know   

KK:                   If they do they do but they won’t say it but you might tell by their faces.

Ish:                   No, me personally, I’ve not had any experiences where I feel like I’ve been judged. I feel like, as a professional, you shouldn’t judge because you’re there to help, not to like treat them different from like how they’re dressed or what situation they’re going through, stuff like that.

Asta:                 Yeah, I just feel like sometimes you can be judged if the GP or whatever feels like what you’re talking about isn’t serious enough or they ask if you’re doing something and you have to say that you’re not doing it, they may judge you for not doing it as well.

Junior:              I feel like they can’t obviously judge when you’re there in character but they may be able to judge behind the scenes or maybe if you’re being a bit complicated they then might not invest all of their time into you, they might not really care as such. They’d obviously do their job and, but they wouldn’t like, maybe if you needed to get signposted to this place and they know if you’re being that, they probably wouldn’t go the extra mile for you if you get what I mean?         

Ish:                   I feel like, because they’re so busy, it’s just a quick in and out thing. Like they just see you for your issue, they’re just prescribing medication and then they just send you out. There’s not enough time to like actually have a proper convo with them.           

B:                     So it feels a bit rushed and a bit almost like they don’t, they feel like they don’t have the time for each patient when at that moment in time you should be their priority

Joffrey:             it’s just like rush hour for them and every appointment booked in the thing they want to get done. Yeah.

Ish:                   It’s not like easy to just open up to someone that you just met, like you’re going to need time, and maybe not the first appointment, but a couple of appointments down the line. That’s why, I feel, very important to have the same doctor each time as well, it’s like you can open up to them, like get comfortable in the surroundings.

Carolina:           Um, I was going to say like talking to someone who’s like the same gender as you, I think that’s probably one of the most comfortable things as well because for me, I might not want to talk to a full grown man because… I don’t want to get into it too much but there are like cases out in the world where like older men like rape young women as well and… If I was doing therapy I don’t want to be in the same room with a man who’s a lot older than me because I wouldn’t feel comfortable and I’m pretty sure like, I don’t think boys would want to be in the same room as girls as well, so

Melani:             Say if I was to face racism and I had a black therapist, I feel like the black therapist will understand me in some way, whereas talking with someone who’s a white therapist, they might understand it but sometimes not, they won’t understand what it feels like sometimes, like sometimes I come to school and I sometimes get racist slurs said sometimes. It’s like talking to people about what it is to be black is kind of hard. When I think about it really, if I had a black therapist who is black as well or kind of understands what racism feels like, it’s going to be more easy for them to sympathise with me than it is for a white therapist because they have privilege.

Junior:              Every young person, every client that you see, it’s important that you engage with them well because you could lose them forever basically just from that one bad interaction. And I know in myself I’m a very, if something don’t go my way as such it’s like “urgh”, I throw my shoulders up sort of thing and then it’s like “oh I won’t bother anymore”.

B:                     Put your guard up don’t you?

Junior:              Yeah. You do put your guard up massively and for people…

B:                     I do that.

Junior:              …that are in care a lot it’s even worse if you get let down once, it’s like the whole world’s been thrown at you but really someone probably just couldn’t help you out that day and it’s like, but that doesn’t matter to us. That’s how all the young people in care see it too, they don’t care about the what’s been going on behind the scenes, they care about “I’m your young person now, deal with me now” sort of thing.

B:                     But that’s, for me again I completely agree, that couldn’t have been said any better. Being in care is a different experience to what a lot of people will know as their normal and normal is different to everyone. It’s your normal, your version of normal is what you want to be. And being in care immediately takes a toll on who you are and what you do as a person either way and it changes your perspective, it makes you almost slightly more vulnerable to the outside world because it’s the unknown, it’s new and it’s a struggle. It makes things somewhat feel like more of a fear than I don’t want to.      

Moesha:           When you’re in foster care, most of our stuff are limited, we can’t do this, we can’t see family, we can’t do the stuff that we used to do before we were out of care. I feel like you shouldn’t judge someone just because they’re in foster care just because they can’t see their family or do stuff that like other children, like other children can’t and like about politics, it could be more of maybe the Government teaching more about like foster kids’ experience and maybe like having more young people come in, talk about their experience so we understand a little bit as well           

Junior:              Always being supported, always being supported into it because if you get supported into it and then you feel comfortable in the surrounding, whether it be once, twice, three times you’ve been supported into it and then you feel comfortable, getting to that comfortable state of then being able to be released and let go on your own basically.        

Young people definitely in care with all their trauma experiences they do need a lot of support and maybe they do need you to run that extra mile. Might have already run the marathon but you need to just pull your socks up for the extra mile sometimes.

Beep

James:              Great. So now we’re joined by our professional practitioners.

Monica:            Hello, I’m Monica Lakhanpaul. I’m a professor of integrated community child health at University College London and I’m also a practising paediatrician in Haringey. Great to be with you, my work really covers quite a wide spectrum, but my passion and interest is around Co creating interventions with underserved communities, whether they be children under 5, whether they be children living in temporary accommodation or children with disabilities.

Claire:               And hi there. My name’s Dr Claire Agathou. I’m a GP partner based in North Central London, covering Camden and Westminster, with a specialist interest in emergency medicine so also working in the Royal Free Hospital in in Hampstead. But my main passion and my other big role is that I’m the lead for child safeguarding in Camden.

James:              So we just heard the young people talking about their experiences of accessing primary health care. What are your initial reactions?

Claire:               I’ll be honest the biggest word that I felt when I heard it was very deflated actually as a GP… um it was quite shocking to hear real misunderstanding of what our role is and what we can do. It is 100% fact that access is an issue, time is an issue, we are exhausted as a profession…um… And we are by nature very caring and also a very, um a very able profession that there’s a huge scope of things that we can do. So access to us plus access to CAMHS is an issue…

James:              And Monica, your thoughts?

Monica:            It was sad to hear what the young people said, but I wasn’t surprised and that’s what makes it more sad. Their experience resonates with many other young people’s experiences about challenges accessing primary care but accessing not because GPs don’t want to see them but because of the barriers sometimes they face from their own emotions, their own lived experiences, trust, relationship building, knowing what’s going to happen to the information that they share with the GP. And unfortunately, looked after children are a particular group who have been traumatised in different ways, have had very challenging lived experiences and that comes through when they’re trying to work out whether they trust their primary care doctors or not.

Building trust takes a lot of time. You can’t do it in 5 minutes. It’s a really, really hard thing to do. We don’t have the time to do that, we don’t have the skill set often to do that, and I work with children with Down’s syndrome. I see the same families since they were born for 15 years and I work really hard not to disrupt that service when people will say, well, they could see any community paediatrician. No, because it’s taken me a long time to build that trust, I don’t really want to give that up. And you can see the difference. You can see that they will tell you they’re, things that are really troubling them that they would never tell anybody else because they know you as a character. It’s about, it’s a two-way thing. They know you, they know your personality, they know your biases and then they’ve heard from you. So they have also in their own brains thought yeah, I can trust this person. I’m willing to come back. That thought process can’t happen in 5 minutes.

Claire:               I completely agree, I would say that I think that actually there is so much that general practitioners can do in terms of building rapport, um and actually, you know, we are always bridging the gap between mental health services so getting children into CAMHS…. it’s very stressful as a GP, when you’re very worried about a child and you know that you’ve got a huge wait list, a waiting time… But. You’re, it’s hit the nail on the head in 5-10 minutes or you know, 15 minutes if we’ve got an appointment with a child, the expectation of a child or a young person that has gone through so much trauma in their life. It takes time and continuity. What we can’t do with access at the moment is give that continuity. Some of us will, where possible, most GPs once they recognise that there is a need, will continue care directly for a patient so I’ve got lots of children, lots of teenagers that I will allocate my time at the end of the clinic to bring them in… um the system in itself does not pertain to that.

Monica:            Just on the back of that one thing that when we’ve talked to some colleagues and GPs or even paediatricians to be very honest and doctors in training, we’ve we’ve asked have they have trauma informed training and many of them haven’t in the undergraduate training, they don’t have it, so this is often this part of their work is often marginalised, so it’s not something that you’ve trained for years and years and years, sometimes with. And so when they go out into the world where they’re actually practising GPs or practising paediatricians and have to meet families, young people who are in looked after children, it’s not something they’ve come across before. So they’re also very fearful as well some of my colleagues who have talked to or trainees I’ve talked to and I said, well, why don’t you have the conversation with the young people about their mental health or their troubles or or whatever? And actually, sometimes they’re scared of what they say is opening a can of worms because literally they have 5 minutes, 10 minutes, half an hour, very, very short, very, very short times to have those conversations and they feel like they’re going to leave what they say to leave the young people hanging in a way that they’ve opened a conversation, they’ve only got 5 minutes. It’s not long enough to have these very, very distressing conversations sometimes. They have to then close the conversation down very quickly to contain it. And you don’t know when you might see that young person again. And in a way, have they done a disservice to the child or have they actually helped the child? So I think understanding, you know, we’ve done this piece of work with young people, doing this piece of work with trainee professional doctors or health visitors or social workers or nurses or whoever it is who are in this world of looked after children is also really important because I think we need to be supporting them and skilling them up as well so that they understand from all of the, you know, the information you’ve gathered, how they could really enter this world in in a way that they feel comfortable and equipped with as well.

Claire:               I think that’s such a a really, really brilliant point… and so key here, part of being a doctor and definitely when I’m talking to trainees and part of being a GP is you bring a lot of your own personality into it. So every doctor is an individual person. Every person has gone through different life experiences. Some people are more comfortable about challenging conversations, asking about mental health, asking about emotion and some I do think there is there is a need for better training around trauma and certainly I think there could be more that we actually open up and talk about trauma and and going into sort of what looked after children have experienced.

Monica:            If you talk to young people, it comes back to the thing about seeing professionals as outsiders to them, so they the trust that they build with are often the third sector organisations where they can drop in. Sometimes young people don’t want to talk face to face. They don’t want to tell their life’s experiences to somebody they don’t know and they want to find that one person who they can trust. And sometimes that’s a personality issue. So it’s not always about the service, it’s about the personality as well. So you might be referred to CAMHS great service, but you really don’t get on with the CAMHS professional, or you might go to your local charity and your third sector organisation and there’s a community worker who you just get on with so well that you pour your heart out. So I think it’s, it’s understanding that. It it it’s about how young people think and where they go for help and a lot of the time young people will first go to a place where they feel they can open up. They can feel people won’t judge them, they won’t feel these biases are there. And at that point that support worker, that person can then advocate for them and can support them to then see the GP.

Lauren:             The other thing that’s come out in a few across the board of the different work that we do with children and young people is about this, you know, this fear of opening up the can of worms. But actually what people appreciate and they’re very understanding about is just an empathic listener, just someone who is warm and listening to what they’re saying without necessarily doing anything at all, but just showing an interest goes such a long way.

Monica:            It’s, we go into solution mode. We’re trained as professionals to solve problems. That’s what we are there for. We’ve gone through medical school. We are here to solve a problem and take action. And you know, I’ve got three children myself, and I learn a lot from them. And I think I am constantly reflecting because they’ve been young people and now they’re adults and exactly what you’ve just said. Mum, I don’t need you to solve my problem. I just need you to listen.

Claire:               I think a lot of general practitioners, and as I say, obviously myself, we went into this profession because family practise is what it’s about. It’s about family practises. Should be about continuity. It should be about seeing, I love seeing patients from, you know, struggling to conceive. We get them pregnant through reproductive medicine and then doing baby checks on the child. You’re seeing a child grow up, but you know. Family practise is about, it was in the day about continuity and knowing your GP and there’s so much to be said for that. And I think there’s not one GP out there… and it it’s quite emotional talking about this because we are struggling as a profession with…  I have so many good practitioners and doctors that I work with and we’re so dedicated to what we do, but what is around us is so we haven’t got the opportunity to do what at the heart of general practice is and this is just one example of a group of people who are suffering at the fact that the access isn’t there and the continuity isn’t there. It’s very difficult when you hear one political party saying if I get into practise, if I, if I if you know, we’re looking at getting seven-day GP appointments, you’ll be seen within seven days by your GP. We can’t even manage 28 days and we are, we are working so hard. We are an exhausted profession and it’s just it’s so frustrating because I think at the heart of issues with primary care is that we’re losing GPs we don’t have enough access. But it’s so sad because you have clinicians that can really do so much good, but there needs to be a huge change around in what’s happening and it’s it is, there’s no, no overnight fix.

Monica:            The other thing is that, if you actually think of how many children a practise might see who were looked after so, I don’t know the numbers, but you’ve you know on this call you’ve got, you know you’ve got people who are in a way in that space, working hard in that area, understand that field. So we’re sort of the converted, OK, in some sort of way … But if you’re in a practise and you’re seeing people with diabetes and asthma and all of these other multiple problems and you haven’t actually had much exposure during your training either, which you won’t of, actually, how many children do you actually see in your practise, who are looked after children?…  if you’ve only got one in X number of children, you’re not experienced in that field. It’s, it is a rare, rare encounter for you. Whereas if you’re, you know, we do have like family planning clinics, but you’re seeing all children, all young people who need a family planning assessment or a need or a discussion. And they they get gain their experience by numbers, by seeing, by learning and their own lived experiences of being professionals. Here you’re not in that area. You have one child among so many, so again, GPs often take leadership roles in different practises in areas where they feel comfortable, or where they’ve had extra training, so you know every GP I’m sure wants to do the best for every child who walks through that door, but they are constrained about the system capacity, sometimes skills, sometimes knowledge because they have so many things to be good at. The question here is not are GPs doing anything wrong or it’s about hearing the lived experiences of these children’s journey and going well, OK could we innovate and could we do something differently? Can we think about how we can remodel within the capacity and the funding that we have may be a different model that would speak to these children um in a way that is fit for purpose or meets their needs.

James:              And what could be some possible solutions looking forward? Claire, have you any thoughts?

Claire:               I wonder if I mean certainly I think in itself this has led to me thinking about what can we do to almost, sometimes you can do these kind of posters or handouts like just what you maybe there needs to be some more obvious information. But you know there’s certainly more that needs to be done for people to understand our role.

Monica:            There are key points in which information can be shared with young people, so, and it’s not just with young people, it’s also with the foster carers. So if the foster care, there’s a fear of the foster care is not doing the wrong, they don’t want to do the wrong thing either. So actually, if they know as well the rules of engagement are. You have some amazing foster carers out there who want to do the best for the young people, but they also are quite fearful about what they are, they allowed to do what they have permission to do or not so you could have information for the young people entering foster care… Um but also for the foster carers who can then support the young people as well, who are living with them.

Lauren:             Can you see it, Claire? Like a viable way of of GPs, making it more out into community settings?

Claire:               In terms of a GP, within practise in everyday, going out into outreach settings… in theory in terms of if there was a role that was created specifically for that. Then yes, maybe that would be helpful…. But then at the moment it’s, it’s just not something that would be in any shape or form viable. What’s been really successful in the last few years and certainly post pandemic is we have. In place in every practise should be a social prescriber. Generally at the moment they tend to work with adults, but they they’re a great bridge between the GP and sort of social issues and picking up things. And it can span from helping organising appointments or helping organise, you know, access or flagging to us if they have any concerns that they want us to investigate further. So I just wonder if there’s the potential for social prescribers to develop more sort of paediatric adolescent roles, where perhaps they can even have roles in going into community spaces and be more visible because they actually have a very useful bridge between patients and actually being able to directly speak to a GP and flag when they’re concerned.

James:              Monica, what are your thoughts about possible solutions?

Monica:            I think it’s very important for us to consider that there are solutions out there and there are exemplars that we can build on. So for example up in Manchester, they have a focused care approach and this means that there’s a wrap-around service, around GP practises. We understand from what we’ve heard, you know, GPs are already stretched to the brim. They want to do their best, but it’s very difficult. However, in Manchester, the focused care approach, they have allied professionals, psychologists, other community care workers who work in partnership with the GPs. They build that relationship, build that trust with the GPs, but also the community that they serve. And so a lot of the initial work, initial relationship building is done by the individuals in the focused care group, but then they have a network of GPs who they can link into and that collaborative partnership working works extremely well.

James:              On that positive example we’ll press pause on this conversation. There’s clearly work that can be done, and resources to be found, to help remove barriers for care-experienced young people and care leavers. It’s been great to hear your passion, commitment and care.

Lauren:             I’d just like to say thanks very much to Monica and Claire for joining us today.

Monica:            Thank you so much for having us, James and Lauren.

Claire:               Again, thank you. Thank you so much, James and Lauren and Monica. It was lovely to have a chat with you as well. Thank you.

Beep

Lauren:             We covered so much in both of those conversations. I think the main point I took away from listening to the young people was that they needed professionals to create the right space for them to feel comfortable to enable them to talk about their health.

James:              The young people were alert to the way that they were spoken to, whether someone showed that they were really listening, and people’s body language too.

Lauren:             And the nature of appointments – seeing different people each time and feeling under time pressure – made it hard to create that trusting relationship with the professional.

James:              And we could hear that mental health was something important to them and both the young people and the doctors agreed that health professionals could be more informed about the impact of trauma.

Lauren:             It was really good to hear both points of view.

James:              It seemed like training for professionals, and perhaps carers, was a part of the solution, but making sure that there was enough time and continuity of care for care-experienced young people might need solving at a service-level too. 

Lauren:             Definitely. There was lots to think about.

James:              Let’s say bye for now.

Lauren:             Bye.

James:              Bye bye.

Beep

James:              We’d like to thank all the young people who took part in these conversations. It was brilliant to hear their voices. We’d like to thank the staff that work with these young people who enabled these conversations to happen. We’d also like to thank the health professionals who took part for listening and reflecting on their own practices and experiences.

The podcast was an output from a study of care-experienced young people’s views of accessing general practice and dental services, led by Drs Lauren Herlitz and Claire Powell from the Children and Families Policy Research Unit at University College London. The conversations were recorded and co-facilitated by me, James Baldwin, you can find out more about my work at jamescreates.com. I also edited and produced the podcast. You can find further links in the podcast description.

This podcast was funded by the National Institute of Health and Care through the Children and Families Policy Research Unit. The views expressed are those of the creators and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care