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PROJECT 99: RESEARCH PROCESS THE METHODS UTILISED IN CONDUCTING BOTH THE DESK BASED RESEARCH AND THE ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT WITH YOUNG PEOPLE.

SNOOK

OUR APPROACH TO SHARING THE PROJECT 99 REPORT MATERIALS: Open Access, Some Rights Reserved The outputs of the Project 99 exploration of internet-based approaches to support youth mental health have emerged through a coproduction approach, involving Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS (GGCNHS) as commissioning body, a three agency consortium (consisting of Mental Health Foundation, Snook and Young Scot) and young people, all supported by a multi-agency steering group. In turn, this project is an agreed action within the Board’s Strategic Framework for Child and Youth Mental Health Improvement, ratified by the Child and Maternal Health Strategy Group in June 2012.

embedded in the report documentation, which is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, its main conditions being:

Note that the material presented in the Project 99 reports is the result of combined work from the commissioned partners and the participating young people and does not represent the views of GGCNHS.

· The work is not resold or used for any commercial purposes

GGCNHS is keen to make this work available to any interested party, while retaining the copyright. We have therefore applied an open access policy to this work which allows anyone to access the report material online without charge. Anyone can download, save or distribute this work in any format, including translation, without permission.

This is subject to the terms of the licence

· GGCNHS and the three commissioned partners – Mental Health Foundation, Snook and Young Scot are credited · This summary and the address www. wegot99.com are displayed · Creation and distribution of derivative works is permissible, but only under the same or a compatible licence

· A copy of the work or link to its use online is sent to GGCNHS via the contact form on wegot99.com

You are welcome to ask for permission to use this work for purposes other than those covered by the creative commons license.

GGCNHS gratefully acknowledges the work of Creative Commons in inspiring our approach to copyright for this report. To find out more go to www. creativecommons.org Potential for Future Development and Collaboration GGCNHS and its local community planning partners will now be actively considering all the material and recommendations contained in this work with a view to formulating a response and a forward development programme, as part of the wider body of work to improve child and youth mental health in Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

In recognising the emerging nature of this agenda, the Health Board would welcome dialogue with partners and potential partners who may be interested in collaborating in aspects of this work, and in discussion with agencies who may already be engaged in similar work, with a view to sharing good practice.

For further discussions please contact us via the wegot99.com contact form.

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6.1 YOUTH ENGAGEMENT PROCESSES: OVERVIEW Working with local youth groups, we carried out 6 individual case study interviews with carefully selected young people, and 5 group engagement sessions. The sessions were carried out as part of each youth groups programme of events, taking place at their facilities and supported by their group leaders and workers. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter, only young people in a well supported environment were approached, and appropriate aftercare measures were put in place.

Fri 21st June: Erskine Music Media Group size: 10 Thurs 25th July: Big ShoutER Group size: 4

We designed a bespoke set of tools for the engagement sessions to facilitate the young people’s involvement. We framed the sessions as mini-design research workshops, splitting the larger groups into two teams and assigning the young people roles The groups we worked with for the (eg. ‘Visualiser’ and ‘Summariser’). engagement sessions are as follows: Each young person was given a sketchbook, to jot down ideas and Mon 17th June: thoughts that they didn’t want to YoMo: Glasgow East’s Youth Empow- make public erment Charity, Dennistoun.

Group size: 11 We then led them in a series of activities, which are listed overleaf.

Tues 18th June: These were adapted slightly from Active Renfrewshire, Paisley. group to group, and not every Group size: 8 session included every activity.

Weds 19th June: GAMH Young Carers, Govan.

Group size: 6

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6.2.1 YOUTH ENGAGEMENT PROCESSES: ACTIVITIES The activities first focused on digital media use, then on issues of mental wellbeing. Finally we looked at how the two areas might combine.

Activity 1: Digital and social media use A very simple warm up activity in which the young people we asked to pick and match up icons in order to demonstrate which social media sites they used most, and which digital devices they used in order to access them.

Activity 2: Understanding social media interactions This activity helped the young people to analyse their use of popular social media sites such as Facebook. It asked them to break down their most recent interactions through a series of questions, helping them to articulate what exactly they were using the sites for, who they were talking to, and the positives and negatives of social media experiences.

Activity 3: Brainstorm on mental health This brainstorm began as a word association game, that encouraging the young people to write down anything that came to mind in relation to the words ‘Mental Health’. The results were clustered into themes and the brainstorm was then directed to discuss various key themes, including: how young people could look after their mental health, who they went to for support and advice, what they felt about the stigma that surrounds mental health, etc.

Activity 4: Persona Building The young people were asked to create a character that may need the help of mental health support services, based around a prompt card. This prompt card provided a clue as to their experience of mental health issues. They were asked to consider the character’s interests and social media use, but also their relationships with friends and family, and who they trusted for advice.

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6.2.1 YOUTH ENGAGEMENT PROCESSES: ACTIVITIES Activity 5: Storyboarding Following on from the persona activity, the young people were asked to draw or write a story - in a series of small steps - about their character, in relation to the prompt card hinting at their experience of mental health issues.

Activity 6: Problem and Opportunity Identification

Activity 7: Opportunity/Idea Creation Through the use of a specifically designed opportunity card, we helped the young people to create and articulate quick ideas for digital (and otherwise!) support services.

They were asked to create ideas for the character’s created in the persona building exercise or discussed during the brainstorm activity.

This activity used a stickering method to help the young people identify the problems surrounding mental health issues and social media use that had arisen during the previous exercises. We then aided them in identifying possible opportunities that could help build ideas for services.

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6.2.2 YOUTH ENGAGEMENT PROCESSES: CO-DESIGN SESSIONS The co-design sessions were attended by a core group of young people who had expressed enthusiasm for the project after participating in one of the initial enagagement sessions.

The first session primarily focused on free and imaginative idea generation through games, sketching and visual brainstorming techniques. An entire wall of vibrant service ideas, dreams and thought was created. Much thought was given to the space in which the sessions took place and objects used as props, in order to stimulate the young people’s imaginations and to maintain a safe, mentally healthy environment.

graphic identities and screen shots demonstrating some of the proposed interactions of these services ideas. These were presented back to the young people at the next session in a mock board meeting. The young people were given roles to play and prompts for how to do so; one was to be, for example, a skeptical commissioner, another a worried parent, yet another an enthusastic young supporter of the idea. This allowed for an imaginative evaluation of the ideas from different perspectives.

User journeys were then drafted to further develop how the ideas might work in practice.

This ideas were then categorised into possible services and broader visions. They were evaluated and the favourites selected. Two ideas for services that supported youth mental health were then chosen.

Through the use of personas and imagined user journeys, the young people began to imagine exactly how these could work and what the benefits would be.

Following this session, project members at Snook created

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6.2.3/4 ENGAGEMENT SESSION RISK MANAGEMENT & LIMITATIONS Risk Management Due to the sensitive nature of the project’s subject manage, stringent risk management was required.

Engagement sessions were arranged only with pre-existing youth groups who had previously been involved in similar types of youth engagement projects, and in which the young people were known to be well supported. These youth groups were either a part of the Health Board’s networks or those of Young Scot, who have extensive experience in youth engagement work

Limitations Appropriate aftercare procedures were put in place. All participants were kept fully informed of the research process and gave written consent for their participation and any appearance in photographs.

Group leaders and workers were closely liaised with before and after each session. The individual activities were carefully planned, with the focus on positively framed discussion and idea generation. The persona building and storyboarding exercises were only used in groups

where the young people were specifically supported in mental health issues by experienced youth workers, as they have the potential to cause the young person to reflect on negative personal experiences, despite asking them to think about the situations of others. Such activities should only be carried out in the most well supported environments.

The very fact that the young people within the engagement and codesign sessions all attended youth groups meant that completely socially isolated young people would not be engaged with and hence exclude those that would perhaps be most in need of support for mental health through digital means. Finding appropriate and risk managed ways in which to engage with socially isolated young people merits an entire research and design project in its own right, but was not possible in the scope of this project.

Thanks to the existing networks of GGC NHS and Young Scot, we were able to approach a broad range of youth groups in order to achieve diversity in our engagement sessions in terms of ethnic background, sexual orientation, physical and learning abilities and beyond. However, timing issues and capacity restrictions meant that we were not able to meet all groups initially contacted and to achieve quite the level of diversity we would have liked. Further work is required to ensure that the true diversity of youth voice is heard as digital assets are developed.

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6.2.5 UTILISATION OF PROJECT BRANDING & SOCIAL MEDIA A clear visual identity was created to generate a feeling of momentum and allow the young people involved to connect with the project. It also allows enables easier dissemination of the project to a wider audience of young people and interested partners. We named the project ‘PROJECT 99’ after the phrase ‘99 problems’, that all young people would be well aware of. It was deemed that a name that didn’t directly relate to mental health was desirable for credibility and stigma related issues. The brand aims to appear energetic and approachable.

It aims to be more ‘lifestyle’ than specifically ‘health’ in terms of positioning.

The branding has been utilised on the bespoke engagement tools created for our sessions with young people. It it also represented through a specially created project website, blog and twitter stream.

The website has a deliberately simple and adaptable aesthetic; not just for ease of reading, but to allow easy adaptation and contiunation, as the project develops. The website has a ‘HELP’ button visible at all times, that will take any distressed young people visiting the site directly to a list of emergency

contacts, as hosted on the Mental Health Foundation website. There is also a ‘quick hide’ button for young people worried about being seen using a mental health related site. It takes them immediately to the home page of a search engine.

It is aimed primarily at the young people engaged in the project so far, but has scope beyond this as a means of dissemination for the project outcomes.

Crucially, the website also contains a blog and there is an active Project 99 twitter account. In the spirit of the project, they have been created in order to allow the NHS to experiment with direct communications to young people through social media and to create transparency around the project process. The blog and twitter account have not yet been heavily pushed to young audiences, meaning they have a low amount of followers, providing a low risk test bed for such communications to take place.

Should the project and branding have scope beyond this initial stage, a social media presence is already in place and ready to be pushed to young people through relevant channels.

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6.3 DESK BASED RESEARCH PROCESSES. This second strand of the project approach explores the existing digital services that provide support for youth mental health.

telephone interviews. We have used this input to present a series of case studies to illustrate the types of approaches that are feasible.

Mental Health Foundation, Snook and Young Scot used their existing networks and knowledge of this field to review publicly available material gained through basic literature searches and use of search engines. We combined this with grey literature provided through our networks, and via input from key stakeholders gained through

The culmination of this research to date is presented in chapter 5 of this report and the mapping document in the appendices. This paper uses an illustrative approach, providing a snapshot and some pointers for further reading. It is not a systematic review of literature, nor a comprehensive mapping of initiatives.

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WEGOT99.COM SNOOK