The Mental Health Foundation Scotland secured funding from the National Lottery Awards for All scheme to bring together a youth panel of young volunteers living with long term health conditions, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How the youth panel began
The youth panel was facilitated remotely through various digital platforms with the aim of co-producing digital content and a social media campaign to raise awareness of how young people living with long term health conditions are facing additional challenges to their mental health as a result of the coronavirus.
What they realised through sharing their experiences
The panel realised that they all had shared experiences but felt like they were being labelled into one homogenous category of people with ‘underlying health conditions’, despite how different and complex their conditions and their lives are.
So, the panel founded the #MoreThanACondition campaign and set off with a mission to show how young people with long term health conditions are so much more than their conditions.
Utilising the Mental Health Foundation social media channels across the UK, the panel promoted the #MoreThanACondition campaign, raised awareness of the issues and made some key calls to action.
The success of the campaign
The #MoreThanAcondition campaign reached almost 100,000 people and just under 2,500 of those engaged directly with the campaign.
The youth panel engaged with professionals across the third sector, public health, education and government throughout the campaign, with key collaborative partnerships with Children’s Health Scotland, Children in Scotland and the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. These partnerships offered additional opportunities for the youth panel such as consulting on the Children’s Health Scotland SMS:Connect service and participating in the ALLIANCE Humans of Scotland project.
Highlights of the campaign
The highlights of the campaign were pulled together in the below project and campaign summary video. It provides a great overview of what the panel achieved and includes reflections from the youth panel members themselves and some support from our key partners.
We are looking forward to exploring the next steps for the campaign and thank everyone for their support with this project.