Learning from Research: “What’s the point?” - How does CAMHS listen to young people with a social worker?

THEME

Despite the long-standing policy push to include young people’s perspectives in their mental health care, research about young people with social work involvement has consistently shown that they feel they are not listened to.

Drawing on Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice we examine the notes of 70 young people with a social worker (comprising 16,566 unique case notes) accessing one Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

Our team of five researchers, including three experts-by-experiences, applied discourse analyses to the notes to examine how these young people’s knowledge of their lives and needs was situated.

Recognizing that case notes reflect the expectations of a system rather than what young people actually said, we consider how system-level priorities resulted in CAMHS professionals listening for risk, compliance and narrow mental health symptomologies. As a result of service resource limitations young people’s speech was included as proof of the authenticity of their words/actions. It was only if young people said the right risky things that they were deemed serious enough to receive care. 

This decontextualized, risk-orientated approach to young people’s speech resulted in testimonial invalidation whereby young people’s stated preferences often did not align with what care they received. Younger children and those living in residential care were disproportionately viewed as lacking credibility.  Epistemic justice, we contend, relies on professionals taking seriously young people’s unique knowledge about their own emotional lives. Listening to young people requires better resourcing of mental health services to ensure young people’s preferences can be actioned.

PRESENTERS

Presenters will include a team of researchers from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care from the University of Cambridge. The team include:

Jack Smith, Francesca Crozier-Roche, Taliah Drayak who all have lived experience of both CAMHS and social care and long track-records of championing young people’s rights. Working alongside them are Dr. Tessa Morgan, who is a qualitative researcher at the University of Cambridge and David Graham, the National lead for the Care Leaver’s Association.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Anyone interested in young people’s social care or social work, and/ or mental health care. We will link the discussion about how to best facilitate young people’s participation in health care more broadly. This talk will be particularly interesting for parents and guardians supporting young people currently involved with CAMHS and for anyone interested in research created by experts-by-experience.

FEES

Members: FREE (don't forget to log in to your account to receive your discount)
Non-members: £20+VAT.

Places on this event are limited, so early booking is recommended.

CONTACT

Telephone 020 7520 7520/0310

Email events@corambaaf.org.uk

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