— Co-design / Co-production with Children and Young People

This episode continues the conversation from part 1, exploring the process of co-design through the case study of Emerging Minds’ practice paper, Supporting children and families: How does co-design invite us to think differently? Child and family partner coordinator, Lydia Trowse is once again joined by co-authors Jason Tyndale (child and family partner), Jackie Amos (psychiatrist), and Rhys Price-Robertson (researcher). Together, they reflect on their experiences and share advice for people looking to integrate co-design into their work with children and families.

In this conversation, we explore the process of co-design through the case study of Emerging Minds’ practice paper, Supporting children and families: How does co-design invite us to think differently? Child and family partner coordinator, Lydia Trowse is joined by co-authors Jason Tyndale (child and family partner), Jackie Amos (psychiatrist), and Rhys Price-Robertson (researcher) to discuss how the process of co-design informed the conceptualisation, design and development of this resource, and to share practical tips for people looking to integrate co-design into their work with children and families.

This paper is for practitioners who work with children and families, especially those living in complex environments. Rather than provide concrete practice advice, it encourages readers to reflect on broad themes — including power, inclusion, and suffering — that are often obscured by the high demands of day-to-day practice. We hope that reading and thinking about these themes creates space for self-reflection, ethical inquiry, new ideas, and rich conversations.

At Student Minds, we recognise that people with lived experience of mental health difficulties are experts by experience. We know from our work that professionals often worry that students may not fully understand the complexity of these issues and that therefore their requests and insights may not be valid. In recent years there has been a media narrative describing students as either ‘generation snowflake’ or ‘vulnerable youngsters in crisis’, neither of which acknowledges the complexity of the current issues or recognises that students vary in terms of their identities, varying ages and needs.

Worldwide, there is an ever-increasing expectation that youth mental health care be co-designed with young people. Whilst many organisations see the value of partnering with young people, there is much confusion about what co-design is and the term is often mistakenly used to describe any type of youth participation. Developed with members of Orygen’s Youth Advisory Council and Primary Health Network Advisory Group, this guide will be useful to anyone involved in designing, commissioning or delivering mental healthcare for young people.