Agenda item

The Board received a presentation by Lucy Garnham and Grace Bennett, supported by Karen Seaman, which outlined the various youth engagement activities that were taking place as part of the Shaping Stainforth initiative.  This project was a 3-year pilot funded by the Health Foundation aimed at improving mental health and wellbeing in communities.  Lucy and Grace had both been taken on as apprentices under the scheme and they outlined their lived experience journeys from the point of leaving school and explained how they had each personally benefitted from this experience on a number of levels, including improved mental health and from a personal development and career perspective.

During subsequent discussion, Board members thanked Lucy and Grace for their excellent and thought-provoking presentations. 

Councillor Nigel Ball advised that it might be useful for Karen and her team to approach the Towns Board to see if they would be willing to have a young person from Shaping Stainforth take up a seat on their membership.  He also gave an example of an inter-generational ‘Miners Tea Party’ event held in Denaby that had been organised in conjunction with Heritage Doncaster which had been an effective way of educating school children on the industrial heritage links in their local community.

Toby Lewis offered to meet with Karen, Lucy and Grace to identify and understand the current gaps in mental health service provision they had spoken of, so that steps could be taken to re-shape services to meet those needs.

In response to a comment by the Chair on the need to link in with local young people in developing the Mental Health Strategy, Lee Golze confirmed that Karen and the team had been invited to the next Mental Health Strategy Group meeting in order to discuss ways in which all parties could connect better in this area of work.  Lee also indicated that he would like to visit Karen and the team to see the good work they had been doing in Stainforth with a view to replicating this approach in other regenerative neighbourhoods in Doncaster.

With regard to actions, Rachael Leslie asked that a further recommendation be added in relation to encouraging all partners to have more apprentices within their organisations, particularly apprentices from local communities, working on local projects.

In addition to the above, the Board noted the following recommendations had been put forward for consideration:

• Listen to the voice of young people to support strength based changes;
• Invest in hyper local mental health services to ensure services for young people are accessible and local; and
• Influence young people’s experiences by investing in Shaping Stainforth methodology.

The Chair suggested that these recommendations should be revisited by the Board at a future meeting, to allow time for the discussions to be held at the Mental Health Strategy Group and other actions as referred to above to be completed.  Karen and the apprentices would be invited back again at that time to update the Board on progress and to advise on any outstanding areas of work that still needed attention.

RESOLVED to note the above recommendations/actions arising from discussion on the presentation and agree that an update on progress be received at a future Board meeting.