Evidence Library

Abstract:

Aims:

• To identify the met and unmet needs of young people leaving care, to explore the health experience of young care leavers and to suggest ways in which health service provision to this group may be improved.
• To assess the benefits and drawbacks of young people's participation for all those involved in the study.

Methods: Young people leaving care were involved as members of the research steering group. They also developed an interview schedule for use with their peers, received training as peer interviewers and carried out a survey of young people leaving care in the mid-Surrey area.

Findings/recommendations: Many of the young people involved found carrying out interviews to be a huge responsibility. They felt badly about bringing up the past with interviewees and then leaving them, and felt responsible when people became upset. They were frustrated at not being able to help people and did not know what to say to support them. The interviews also brought up emotional issues for the interviewers themselves.

The peer interviewers said they would have liked more training and support, specifically:

• more training in interview skills
• more training in addressing confidentiality, especially managing reports of abuse in care
• more support in coping with the after-effects of interviews.

However they also benefited personally from being involved, could see the value of the research and felt they were contributing to changing things for the better.

The research team thought that the benefits of conducting peer research were:

• better quality data, because it covered a wider range of subjects, was more relevant and more reliable - 'reaches parts that other research does not meet'
• greater honesty from interviewees
• more focus in the interviews on subjects that were of importance to young people and might have otherwise been overlooked
• findings are more persuasive when presented by users at conferences or to local agencies/authorities, particularly when users feel a sense of ownership and conviction about the research.

Overall the involvement of young people resulted in the research being of more use than if it had been commissioner-led and meant it placed greater emphasis on the recommendations for agencies than on the users' behaviours/lifestyles.

Related entry: none currently available

Categories: health
public health
social care
Identifying topics, prioritising and commissioning
Designing research
Undertaking research
Analysing and interpreting
Writing up and disseminating
impact on research
impact on research ethics
impact on service users involved
impact on implementation and change
impact of public involvement
journal article
Implementation and change

Date Entered: 2009/01/28

Date Edited: 2012/11/21