The RCPCH &Us Volunteer Awards 2022 help share the fantastic work our volunteers are involved in and the impact they have in health policy and improving health services and experiences. The awards also inspire others to get involved and support the voice of children and young people.
To reivew the many fantastic RCPCH &Us projects in 2022, we convened our judging panel - RCPCH President, Dr Camilla Kingdon, Registrar, Professor Steve Turner and Assistant Registrar, Dr Mo Akindolie.
There are four categories:
- Educate: Recognising the education of others in engagement and what matters to children and young people through articles, published items, reports
- Collaborate: Recognising innovative and inspiring projects where children, young people and professionals have worked together.
- Engage: Recognising children, young people and parents/carers taking in the lead on making changing to child health
- Change: Recognising projects that share the platform with key decision makers to improve child health
And four winners!
- Educate: Milestones Young Writers
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Young people have created articles for our member magazine, Milestones, on topics that are of importance to them including accessibility and inclusion, epilepsy care, climate change and poverty - sharing their voices, views and hopes with paediatricians and the magazine's readers. To help members stay up to date with the interests of their patients, they've also written reviews on films and books.
- Collaborate: Forgotten Voices Project
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Young people volunteered to take part in a 鈥渇orgotten voices鈥 jury with Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges to look at where their voices had been excluded during the pandemic. They created top tips for services to support future engagement, which were developed into a video, which is now used in training sessions and presentations to raise awareness of how to do engagement well.
- Engage: COVID Book Club Vaccination Project
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When discussions started on extending the COVID-19 vaccination programme to under 18s, young people re0formed the COVID Book Club at the College's request. Meeting on a weekly basis, they created exclusion/inclusion criteria to be able to review the voices/wishes/concerns of young people linked to the vaccination, and insight briefings which were shared with the College and beyond.
- Change: RCPCH Engagement Committee
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Over the last year, young people, parents/carers and paediatricians have been actively meeting, working together on their work plan topics of supporting voice in services, training engagement ambassadors and providing expert engagement advice. They have supported the creation of content for awareness days on engagement and rare disease as well as supporting the first pilot of the Engagement QI programme and .
They also awarded highly commended to projects in each of the categories:
- Educate: College Strategy Young Advisors
- Collaborate: External Second Opinions Project (Parents/Carers)
- Engage: Podcasters
- Change: Epilepsy Programme Board Experts by Experience
Congratulations to all of our winners and to all of the amazing volunteers who give their time to RCPCH &Us. Thank you to our judges for taking on this tough assignment!