Positive Participation is a film featuring the stories and artwork of two young people who were involved in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Bristol and South Gloucestershire.
Both took part in participation work within the Barnardo’s HYPE service for the Community Children’s Health Partnership. This meant being involved in interview panels for recruiting staff, feedback on services, presentations and delivering training to staff, strategy writing and art workshops to improve health buildings. Both feel they have benefited ‘therapeutically’ from this work especially in terms of confidence, self esteem and being able to rediscover their skills and talents.
The young people represented are interested in developing their media and art skills and this is reflected in Positive Participation. All artwork has been created by the young people themselves and both continue to produce artistic work that reflects their personal experiences.
The Barnardo’s HYPE project use film as a participation tool to promote the voice and experience of children, young people and their parents/carers. We have a film maker in the HYPE team who helped produce the film. Positive Participation has been shown to commissioners, staff and Kath Evans, the national lead for children and young people’s patient experience. All have found watching the film to be a very powerful experience and are hugely motivating to continue and increase participation across all services.
For more information on HYPE, see the Barnardos' website page.