COVID19: Children and Young People’s Priorities

RCPCH &Us, the children and young people’s network at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has launched the results of their 4-month project looking at the impact of COVID-19 on children and young people across the UK.

Young people have volunteered over 100 hours to read published studies highlighting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, identifying common themes and developing Book Club summaries of their key findings.  In addition, they have spoken with paediatricians, policy leads and national programme managers to understand the Winter Planning and COVID-19 Recovery Plan process, identifying three areas for action by NHS trusts and health boards that will keep children and young people at the centre of plans, services and communities over the coming months.

You can find out more about their project and download their recovery plan priorities, which explores the problem, ideas for solutions and the impact this could have on children and young people at www.rcpch.ac.uk/covid-book-club

The webpage includes:

• Three priority areas from children and young people for Recovery Plans including the PDF download for services
• Eights topics for consideration from children and young people for the NHS/MDTs/local services in the Winter Planning section
• Reviews from the published studies linked to common themes in the book club summaries
• Children and young people’s experiences in a webinar that they planned and delivered
• Access to the further insight, wishes and views of children and young people from the original studies
• Links to the views of other RCPCH &Us project work during COVID-19

There are also further opportunities to help promote the needs of children and young people by:

• Sharing and liking the RCPCH &Us launch tweets
• Sharing and liking the RCPCH &Us social media threads based on each recovery plan priority week commencing 19th October 2020
• Joining the live debate session on 26th October 2020 as part of this year’s free online RCPCH Annual Conference where they will be debating: “Paediatricians’ focus should be the holistic impact of COVID-19 on children and young people, not just the medical impact“

We are incredibly proud of the work that children and young people have done as part of this project and would like to thank them for getting involved to make a difference.

There are also two upcoming webinars as part of the NHS England Engagement Festival:

• Thursday 29th October: A webinar sharing themes from engagement work with young people from LGBTQ+, Gypsy, Traveller and Roma, and young carer communities about their experiences of COVID-19 and lockdown.
• Wednesday 25th November: A webinar highlighting what the evidence is telling us about how the pandemic and lockdown are affecting young people, and themes from COVID-19 related research studies for young people.

The RCPCH &Us Team