Transitioning out of youth involvement roles: an interview with a Youth Involvement Officer and Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead

This blog focuses on evolution in lived experience roles and the transitions that can take place within those roles across time. Drawing on an interview, this week’s blog is written by Niyah Campbell a Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead at the University of Birmingham, and Beckye, a former Youth Advisory Group member for the Institute for Mental Health in Birmingham who has taken on a Youth Involvement Officer role. In reflecting on their experiences and expectations, they hope to engage in a dialogue with other lived experience communities about role transition.

Within mental health research and service delivery, involvement of experts by experience has become increasingly common. The involvement of experts by experience allows for the design and delivery of research that is of higher quality and more rigorous. 

Transitioning out of youth-focussed lived experience groups is a matter that is not well understood and, for many reasons, complex. It can be difficult to transition from the role of being a young contributor to research into a professional in the Public and Patient Involvement space. Working in lived experience roles, either as ‘lived experience practitioners’, ‘peer support workers’, ‘PPI facilitators’ or ‘involvement officers’ can be complex and the relationships you hold in these spaces vary depending on your positioning within either the group or the organisation (Carr, 2019).

In this blog we explore the experience of Beckye, a former Youth Advisory Group (YAG) member for the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Mental Health as she begins the making this transition into an employee in a Youth Involvement Officer. The blog takes the form of responses to an with Beckye (Youth Involvement Officer) and Niyah (Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead). The interview offers early reflections that may be of use to organisations or individuals who may be supporting folk undertaking these transitions or in the process of negotiating the transition themselves. 

Question 1: At this point in your journey, what is exciting about taking on a PPI role? (Beckye: Youth Involvement Officer) 

It excited me as it was the jump from being a young person and contributing, to leading the sessions, which was exciting for me on a personal level. The reason I took the job is I really wanted to introduce other young people to the research space who had not had that experience before, but who wanted to contribute. I felt it was still in the wheelhouse of advocacy and good research practice but it also helps young people along the way to navigate this landscape. 

There’s a lot of opportunity to promote the YAG and I can see how to bring new ideas to the work such a developing the YAG’s internet presence (e.g. via an Instagram account). I am excited about the creative projects. I am excited to work on recruitment of new members and take on YAG lead role, but that’s also scary. There is a lot of unknown – I don’t know how the new YAG members will be, and I don’t know how the existing YAG members will find me having this new role. I am worried it will change the relationships I have with the other young people in the group, as the role will change that. I am scared of contributing as a colleague rather than a young person and it’s a different way to try and interact with people that I am trying to have to figure out. 

Question 2: What are the challenges/obstacles that you think you will have to navigate in making the transition to a PPI professional? (Beckye: Youth Involvement Officer) 

The two big things are how other young people may react; and then how I am going to transition and do the individual processing to adjust to my new positioning in relation to lived experience. I need to figure out where to draw the line, I am used to contributing as a young person – and I am now going to be there to facilitate other people to speak rather than to contribute myself, which is something for me to get my head around. In terms of leading the YAG I am not quite sure about how the dynamic of the new recruitment and existing folk and where and how I fit in it. 

Question 3: As a line manager, what considerations/steps have you made to best support Beckye in making the transition from YAG member to a Youth Involvement Officer? (Niyah: Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead) 

I am really keen on not spoon-feeding as there are so many unknowns within this type of work, so within this role you have to have a degree of comfort with the unknown and you need to use your best judgement. The relationships you build over time. 

I think it’s important to allow the space for trial and error. I’ve made mistakes and had process that failed with the YAG but I have always been open about that, and so I am keen to have that honest conversation and allow Beckye to grow and develop and be allowed to make mistakes. I would like Beckye to develop as a PPI lead yourself and I am very keen on personal development, so providing guidance, but not necessarily being too prescriptive or just giving the blueprint with instructions. 

In terms of our new recruitment as we expand the existing group of young people this year, that is an unknown for both of us. We will not know who the new young people are coming in and we will need to reform the wider group and decide together how we are going to be working with them. I guess in that sense, in managing the unknown, it’s about setting yourself up as best you can and responding as things arise rather than trying to control everything, so allowing the group to form somewhat organically. It is unsettling about bringing new YAG members in now, but as we have a new Youth Involvement Officer it is a good time for Beckye to shape how that goes forward.

Linked to that I think it’s important that we set up frequent points to look at our practices so encouraging reflection of practice as well as reflection on positionality. For myself, I have the privilege of experience and not having been on an equal footing when I started in the role as it was so new – so I can be considerate of that and advocate for Beckye in any space. I don’t anticipate issues necessarily, but hopefully it is reassuring that I can step in and support and also address issues for YAG members themselves who may be struggling with the transition of Beckye’s new role. So signposting, advocating, and supporting are the key tasks or roles I see for myself at the minute.

For me personally, in terms of the academic team, I have transitioned from being new to PPI to an expert. I am aware whilst Beckye is building her skills, we have a lot of expertise now in the team and so there’s an expectation from academic colleagues that we need to manage. I will be here to support those initial interactions. 

The final thing I think we have spoken about is the change in our relationship – where previously I was the YAG lead and Beckye was a young person, and now Beckye is moving into that post. There is a difference in role between Beckye seeing me for a meeting once in a while, to seeing me all the time in the workspace and being line managed by me. That means getting a deeper understanding of my working patterns and hers, so it’s being mindful of those transitions between line manager and colleague from YAG lead. So it’s a shift from serving the YAG to working collegially together. 

question 4: Thinking to the future, what developments do you want to have made in 6-12 months’ time? (Beckye: Youth Involvement Officer) 

I hope I will have figured out the facilitate/response scenario and I contribute by helping other young people to respond rather than me responding as a YAG member. I would like to be comfortable with the different relationship I have with the researchers – I would like to figure out where I fit in. I want a good group dynamic with the YAG and for them to feel supported. The worst bit would be if they come and don’t feel they get anything from the meetings. I would really like to have promoted the YAG more via the Uni website or got a bit more of a presence on campus and around the Uni as well as externally.

Question 5: What advice/guidance would you give to young people that are ageing out of youth-focussed groups and may want to go into these sorts of roles? (Both) 

Beckye: When you are applying don’t play down your experience as a participant – it’s a unique standpoint and the professional may not have had any experience of being on a YAG or in PPI and so that gives you a unique perspective on what works or doesn’t work. 

Niyah: For young people themselves, I think it’s not so much about the young people – I think there are systemic issues about when you move out of youth oriented spaces. This happens in services, but it happens in PPI also as the support or level of communication is very different and you get a drop off and the blame is attributed to the young person rather than the system not being set up correctly. So that’s my first observation. The second issue, is there is a finite time of operating in that space and it should be a natural ending that occurs, rather than viewing ageing out of a YAG as a disaster, you need to view it as all other forms of development.  

Both: If YP are considering entering  ‘adult’ mental health spaces, they should consider trying to link in with other young people of a similar age so you have an ally in that space. Some YAG members enter a space as a singular young person in an established group of adults so it may work better to pair of have more young people so that you can champion each other. I think for young people knowing that these aren’t your issues is really key to moving forward successfully. 

There is a lot of value in lived experience, and experiential knowledge is key to research as well as PPI – having young people in this space is key as you need to hear those different perspectives and they need to co-ordinate activities in a space. Need to be aware of generation gap for relatability and having young people in the space to inform how we co-create those spaces is super important. 

References

Sarah Carr (2019) ‘I am not your nutter’: a personal reflection on commodification and comradeship in service user and survivor research, Disability & Society, 34:7-8, 1140-1153, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2019.1608424

If you would like more information on the Institute for Mental Health Youth Advisory Group please contact: Niyah Campbell or Beckye Williams