My Voice Matters – Evaluation of Team Children and Youth in Stange Municipality

Picture: From the left: Project Manager Juni Raak Høiseth and Project Team Members Ellinor Elvrum Evensen, Johanne Bakken Moe and Christina Kildal. Project Team Member Liva Elvira Myrvold Nynes was not present.

In 2017, KBT recieved funding from Stiftelsen Dam through The Norwegian Council for Mental Health to continue the project My voice matters as a three-year development project, where we are going to customize the User Interviews User (UIU) method for children and youth and their health services. The goal is to develop a method for actual user involvement for children and youth as service users, to enable them to bring forward their experiences with the services with their own voice. As a part of this project, KBT has evaluated Team Children and Youth in Stangehjelpa in Stange Municipality. “Stangehjelpa” is Stange Municipality`s free low threshold measure for everyone.

A group of project team members in the ages of 18 and 23 who themselves have experience with the use of mental healthcare services are trained in the UIU-method. They participate in designing the interview guide, conducting interviews, analysis, writing report and presenting the results in the dialogue conference with the service and participants of the projects. In total we interviewed 9 youths in Stangehjelpa about their experieces with the measure and what they saw as important when meeting the service. Prominent themes were the importance of a low threshold measure with no focus on diagnosis, participation and influence, relation to the helper and the feedback tool FIT. The 13th of June we presented and discussed the findings together with employees from Stangehjelpa Team Children and Youth on a dialogue conference. The goal was to make sure that the youths` experiences were highlighted in the right way, and to bring them forward to the service as a basis for development.

Authors:

Juni Raak Høiseth
Christina Kildal
Johanne Bakken Moe
Ellinor Elvrum Evensen
Liva Elvira Myrvold Nynes

Illustrator:

Anne R. Benschop

Report in Norwegian:

Høiseth, J., Kildal, C., Moe, J. B., Evensen, E. E. & Nynes, L. E. M. (2019). Min Stemme Teller – Bruker Spør Bruker-evaluering av Stangehjelpa Team barn og unge, Stange kommune (KBT-rapprt nr. 1/2019). Trondheim: KBT – Kompetansesenter for brukererfaring og tjenesteutvikling.