HEALTH AND YOUTH WORK
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating How Dedicated Youth Worker Services for Young People with Physical and/or Mental Health Conditions are Organised, Provided and Experienced
IRAS ID
336329
Contact name
Susan Kirk
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
researchregistry10640, Research Registry
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 10 months, 20 days
Research summary
About a quarter of young people now have a physical or mental health condition (LTC). This group of young people are more likely to have problems than their peers regarding their emotional well-being, their day-to-day living and how well they do at school. Becoming an adult can be difficult for them and they can find it difficult to take their treatments, work with healthcare professionals and attend appointments. This can negatively affect their health.Services struggle to provide the right support that young people need and want as they move into adulthood. Young people see them as overly clinical and don’t feel involved in decision-making. Many healthcare professionals feel unprepared to support adolescents. In response to this youth workers have been employed by the NHS and other organisations to support young people with LTCs. However, we don’t know very much about their role or the best way of providing youth work services to improve the health of young people. We want to find out what is the best way of providing youth work services to improve the health and wellbeing of young people with LTCs. To do this we will study six UK youth work services in-depth using case study methods. At each service we will talk to young people, parents, professionals and managers about their views on the services. We will also look at documents about services and observe youth work sessions. We will analyse our data using the Framework approach. At the end of the study, we will use the information we gather to develop guidance on the best way of providing youth work services. We hope that this will be used by the NHS and others to design and provide youth work services for young people with LTCs. This study has been funded by the NIHR.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 5
REC reference
25/WS/0069
Date of REC Opinion
28 May 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion