Unloc Partnership with Southern Health Shortlisted for the HSJ Best Educational Programme Award!

We’re delighted to be shortlisted for the HSJ Partnership Awards 2020 Best Educational Programme for the NHS for our work in partnership with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust!

“It’s vitally important that the NHS works collaboratively with young people to develop future services that best meet their needs. That is why we decided to partner with colleagues from Unloc, who have enabled us to make a meaningful connection with young people across Hampshire; to understand their experiences and perspectives, and raise awareness about support available.”

Dr Nick Broughton FRCPsych, Chief Executive Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust 

The HSJ Partnership Awards celebrate the most effective partnerships with the NHS and highlight the benefits which working with the private and third sectors can bring to patients and NHS organisations, including delivering better services and improving outcomes. 

Unloc’s partnership with Southern Health saw us deliver 4 Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing Roadshows in 2019 in locations all across Hampshire (Portsmouth, Basingstoke, Alton and Gosport) with all local schools and colleges invited to attend the defining event!

We received fantastic feedback from students involved in the Roadshows.

“I learnt that there are a lot of people who are suffering like me. I enjoyed the whole opportunity. It was very educational!”

– Young Person, Gosport Roadshow day

“I thought this event was excellent to be a part of and very informative about different mental illnesses and hope to cope.”

– Young Person, Alton Roadshow day

It’s incredible to hear that schools and colleges are making changes and listening as a direct outcome from our Roadshows, including setting up weekly wellbeing action groups and using students concerns, ideas and priorities to shape their wellbeing strategies.

Survey results from before and after the Roadshow days show an increase in young people feeling comfortable talking about their feelings and emotions, an increase in understanding about the services and support available to them and an increased knowledge of how mental illness can affect people of any age including people the same age as them. 

Thanks to the incredibly insightful feedback and engagement from the 2019 Roadshows, we have laid the foundations for our ongoing partnership with Southern Health into 2020. To find out more about Unloc’s work in 2019 with Southern Health, we encourage you to watch this short summary video and you can read the linked annual summary report. We are particularly pleased to be scaling up the work from last year.

Exciting works are underway with the recruitment and development for a Youth Board who have already had two successful meetings and have begun working to achieve the priorities they set out for themselves. One of their priorities is to tackle negativity about the NHS in the media. They have started work, in partnership with the Southern Health Communications Team, on a positivity Instagram account to combat negative media and share healthcare information and stories which are important to them.  Follow @nhs_youth to keep up to date and support their work! 

We look forward to welcoming new members to the Youth Board and integrating young people’s voices more fully into existing Southern Health structures, including their Executive Board, this February.

Further to the success of the Youth Board, this year we’re excited to announce that we will be visiting 6 new locations to deliver the Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing Roadshow. We can’t wait to show how young people are shaping the future of our health services, but also developing their own potential. 

The 6 locations the Roadshow will be coming to in 2020 are:  

  1. Andover – Tuesday 11th February
  2. Southampton – Tuesday 10th March 
  3. Eastleigh – Eastleigh College – Wednesday 18th March
  4. Winchester – Thursday 26th March 
  5. New Forest – Tuesday 28th April 
  6. Havant – Tuesday 12th May 

Alongside this awesome initiative, we are also running a Careers Roadshow offering 45-minute talks on careers, both clinical and non-clinical, to schools and college across Hampshire.

If you are interested in being involved in any of the above please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Larissa, our Programme Facilitator for Public Sector Partnerships at [email protected]

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