Projects

Developing a North East and North Cumbria Children and Young People’s Research Partnership

This study is funded by an NIHR Programme Development Grant, as part of the Developing Innovative, Inclusive and Diverse Public Partnerships call. The development of the partnership is supported by researchers from the NIHR ARC NENC.

Project summary

Children and young people have a right to be listened to and informed on matters that concern them. Despite this, children and young people’s active involvement in the design of health and social care research is often fragmented and can be tokenistic – which means, where individuals are involved to ‘tick a box’ rather than in a meaningful way.

This project aims to develop a North East and North Cumbria Young People’s Research partnership which will create:

• Opportunities for children and young people across the region to identify health and social care research priorities
• Ways to make sure that their priorities influence research that is carried out across the region with the full engagement of children and young people.

The partnership will add value to work in the region and ensure that the transformative voice of children and young people takes a central role in developing research ideas about issues that directly impact their lives.

Project aims

This piece of work aims to develop a North East, North Cumbria Children and Young People’s Research Partnership, creating a sustainable research community with young people at the centre.

Objectives:

• To recruit and support a group of children and young people (aged 11-25) to form a regional Children and Young People’s Research Partnership.
• To deliver capacity building and ensure that members of the Children and Young People’s
• Research Partnership have the knowledge, skills and confidence to understand health and care research to fully participate in the project.
• To understand the health and care research landscape in the region and to identify ways to influence research priority setting.
• To build on existing work and current processes and structures to support a long term, sustainable plan for the partnership to influence health and social care in the region.

This outcomes of this work are relevant to anyone with an interest in children and young people’s health and wellbeing. This includes policy makers and commissioners, health and care practitioners, researchers, community organisations and members of the public.

The Northern Youth Research Partnership is led by NIHR ARC NENC and Investing in Children and includes partners from:

• NIHR ARC NENC Young Person’s Advisory Network
• NE Youth
• Cumbria Youth Alliance
• Youth focus North East
• Great Northern Children’s Hospital Young People’s Advisory Group North East (YPAGNe)
• Newcastle University
• Lancaster University

Find out more

For more information, please contact project lead Dr Angela Wearn, ARC NENC Research Fellow in Public Involvement and Community Engagement ([email protected]).