NHS England Youth Forum

NHS England is in the process of developing a Youth Forum, which will bring together a group of young people to help them shape health services.

The group will include a diverse range of young people who can work with NHS England to give advice and opinions on healthcare policies and provide ideas on how services can be improved.

The aims of the Youth Forum are to develop a young people’s advisory and action group for NHS England that will form part of the wider Citizen’s Assembly, and develop a national network of young healthcare champions who participate in developing national health policy and who deliver action and change on specific programmes of work.

The Youth Forum will consist of 20 young people who meet three times a year to work directly with NHS England on key areas of work. The work will be decided in partnership with the young people’s group. The Youth Forum will also be involved in on-going work throughout the year. This will involve connecting via email and social media, as well as taking part in discussions, reviewing and feeding back on materials outside of meetings.

The Youth Forum will also include a wider network of young people connected online, who can tell NHS England their ideas and help them to improve healthcare for the future. We want to hear from lots of young people about key issues. This will be done through forums such as a dedicated Facebook page and will be publicised wider once the group is established. This group will also be part of the emerging NHS Citizen Assembly, a network of people and patients who can work with us to improve healthcare.

The Youth Forum will actively be working with NHS partners, the Department of Health and Public Health England, to feed into cross cutting health care issues.

NHS England is working with a number of young people’s organisations to develop the Youth Forum and the British Youth Council is helping NHS England set this up.

For additional information on the Youth Forum visit www.facebook.com/NHSEnglandYF.

To apply to be part of the group of people who meet face-to-face apply online at www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/patients/yth-for/yth-for-app.

For further information contact Hugo Brookes, Policy and Campaigns Officer, British Youth Council, by email at hugo.brookes@byc.org.uk or on 0207 250 8377.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 4 December. Successful applicants will be informed by Wednesday 11 December.