In Our Own Words - Youth Researchers

Welcome to the In Our Own Words page. Thanks for checking us out.

In Our Own Words trains young people in social research methods to investigate other young people's experiences of mental health and wellbeing with the goal of making a difference to services in local communities.

Page contents

What is In Our Own Words?
Who can take part?
Getting involved
What is a peer-led approach?
Project timeline
If I am not a young carer or neurodivergent, can I still take part?
Youth Researcher Surveys

What is In Our Own Words?

In Our Own Words is a project for neurodivergent young people and young carers as lived experience experts. The project trains and supports young people to become researchers to understand other young people's experiences of mental health and wellbeing as well as mental health services. It's a peer-led project where young people lead their own research and decide what areas of mental health and wellbeing they want to look into.

We are working with organisations that work in mental health and research. This includes MindWorks, Surrey University, Surrey Youth Focus and Healthwatch.

Taking place from March to October 2024, Youth Researchers will be trained by professional researchers from Surrey University, learning skills in social research. Social research uses methods like questionnaires and focus groups, to understand our behaviour, attitudes, and experiences and how these may relate to the environment, society and specific events or issues.

The programme is funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research, Applied Research Collaboration and is part of a push to get more young people involved in research, especially about mental health.

Supported by professional researchers and a personal mentor, the Youth Researchers are designing their very own study on a mental health or wellbeing topic that they are passionate about.

The topics are inspired by the Youth Researchers' personal experiences of neurodivergence as they would like their research to help improve services for other neurodivergent young people in Surrey.

Topics include:

school-based support during diagnosis
support for neurodivergent young people out of education because of mental health challenges
teacher training on neurodivergence and understanding the mental health experiences of LGBTQ+ neurodivergent young people

From September 2024, we'll share their findings and make suggestions to leaders in Surrey on what services can do to improve as well as what works well.

Just like a professional researcher, our Youth Researchers are paid hourly for their time.

Who can take part?

Our Youth Researchers are young carers and neurodivergent young people (no diagnosis required) aged 12 to 18 (up to 25 for those with additional needs and disabilities) living, attending school or college and / or accessing services in Surrey.

The Youth Researchers were inspired to take part by their own experiences of ups and downs with their mental health journey and would like to use their findings to improve services for other neurodivergent young people in Surrey. Here is what they say so far about being on the project:

"I'm enjoying doing the In Our Own Words project. Young people's mental health and neurodiversity in Surrey is an important topic that needs more attention and I'm excited to be carrying out research that will make positive changes. I'm happy that us young people have the opportunity to make our voices heard." (Ems, 15)

"I wanted to apply for In Our Own Words because I am passionate about mental health and neurodivergence. As someone who struggles with both, and has experienced it my whole life, I would love to provide an insight to others as to what it's like and what support would be helpful" (Youth researcher, 16)

Getting involved

Applications for our Youth Researcher roles closed in March. Although we have our group of Youth Researchers for 2024, we are still looking for more young people in Surrey to get involved in our programme.

You could be a Project Advisor. If you would like to support the programme and the Youth Researchers through helping them to understand their data and create suggestions for how services could be improved, then we would love to hear from you.

The programme is for young people living, attending school or college and / or accessing services in Surrey. Therefore, young people who may not necessarily live in the county but have a 'connection' to Surrey are also encouraged to get involved. No experience is required. Just enthusiasm and commitment to the project. As well as the desire to share the experiences of young people.

If you would be interested in getting involved and/or have any questions, then do get in contact with us through our email or our socials: Instagram, Facebook and X.

If you are a professional who would like to connect with the project, then please get in touch and email user.voice@surreycc.gov.uk

What is a peer-led approach?

In Our Own Words takes a 'peer-led' approach.

Peer-led research is where people with a lived experience of the topics for example, mental health, have a key role in choosing the research and carrying out the research itself.

This is important as it gives power and voice to the community the research is about and makes sure that the findings are accurate and helpful to them.

It's all about doing research with people instead of about them.

Project timeline

The project will take place from March to October 2024.

The training sessions will take place on weekday evenings. There will be two 2-hour sessions a month for the first 3 months of training. After training is completed, there will be one 2-hour sessions a month over the summer holidays.

If I am not a young carer or neurodivergent, can I still take part?

Yes. You can still get involved as a Project Advisor.

A Project Advisor will not take part in the monthly research training but will join later on in the programme to help Youth Researchers explore their findings and come up with suggestions about what young people may need. You can also have a role in presenting these findings to key decision makers in Surrey.

You can also take part as a research participant. This means you can take part in a Youth Researcher's project so they can collect data from you, to understand more about your experiences of a certain topic.

Youth Researcher Surveys

Our youth researchers have now been trained by professionals at Surrey University to design and lead their own social research projects. This research is to understand experiences of mental health, emotional wellbeing, and service use for neurodivergent young people. Their findings will be used to make recommendations to leaders across Surrey about how services can be positively improved for neurodivergent young people.

Being neurodivergent themselves, our youth researchers are experts by lived experience. This means that they have a personal connection to the topics they are investigating. For their chosen data collection method, they decided to create a survey to gather responses.

Their surveys are now ready for you to fill in. With the responses you give and the experiences you share, they will be able to investigate what young people in Surrey (as well as teachers and parents/carers) think and need.

About the survey

Each survey will take around 5 minutes to complete. Your responses will be completely anonymous. You can:

look at the topics and answer whatever survey may interest you or relate to your personal experience
fill in as many as you like

Surveys for young people to fill in:

Surveys for teachers, school staff or parents/carers to fill in:

Surveys close on Monday 29 July. If you have any questions about any of the surveys, please contact user.voice@surreycc.gov.uk.

Thank you for supporting youth research in Surrey.

In this section

In Our Own Words - Background information

Reviewed: 16 Jul 2024
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