RCPCH&Us Conference Reflections
RCPCH&Us Conference Reflections
Last month, I attended my first conference as a youth advisor for mental health research. Not only was it a first conference for me but it was also the first youth conference for RCPCH and knowing this actually made it feel a lot less scary. As a young person with lived experience walking into a room full of paediatricians, researchers and health professionals it was quite surreal and perhaps a little nerve racking initially!
One of my highlights was meeting all the other young people who were involved. It wasn't just young people with lived experience of mental health, it was people with lived experience of all health. What was so lovely was to be able to collaborate and exchange ideas with each other. There was something quite special about all of us sharing our own personal experiences so openly. Not only that but it was nice to feel like you belonged in a space even though everyone has gone through something different. What was great was that throughout the entire day I felt that my voice, and the voices of all the other young people involved were truly heard.
Throughout the conference, we covered different areas such as mental health, neighbourhood health, moving to adult services and growing up in a digital world. A couple of themes that really stuck with me, firstly, how much stigma still stops young people from feeling able to seek support because so many feel judged just for being seen accessing help. The second was how much reliance there still is on hospital-based care, when actually it’s the community-based support that often gets left underfunded and overlooked. It wasn't just about discussing the challenges as solutions were discussed too. For stigma, the aim is to normalise mental health and other health support from an early age, weaving it into schools and teaching curriculum rather than treating it as something separate. For the over-reliance on hospital-based care, the solution was about shifting more funding towards community and youth-based services so that support feels more familiar and accessible rather than clinical.
My biggest takeaway was that young people don't want services built for them, we want services built with us because at the end of the day young people want to be listened to and not spoken for.
Following this conference and after discussing everything with everyone, it has made me more determined to keep showing up in these spaces, making sure young people’s voices shape the support that is being built.
For any young people who may be nervous about attending a conference like this for the first time, it’s not scary, it was such an amazing opportunity, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of this!
