Shuhaney's Journey

Shuhaney is a member of the Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester's Young Person's Advisory Group (YPAG). Our YPAG is made up of 20 young people aged 16-24 from across Greater Manchester and was established in July 2022.

Below Shuhaney blogs about her experiences and some of the work she has been involved in.  

My name is Shuhaney, I am 19 years old and live with my mum and have a younger brother who lives in a care home. I am in a wheelchair as I have Cerebral Paulsey; I love shopping, music and meeting new people.

When I was in college studying Health and Social Care I was trying to find a job to gain some work experience and was struggling to find anything because I am in a wheelchair and my careers advisor shared an opportunity to get involved in producing a podcast about young people’s mental health, this interested me as I am very passionate about people’s mental health but also hoping to become a children’s counsellor or therapist and this was great experience.

I didn’t know anything about making podcast though but after talking to Aneela from ARC-GM on the phone I was assured that I didn’t need any experience. The first few sessions I was very nervous as I have never done such a thing before but the Young Persons Advisory Group (YPAG) has now become the YPAG family.

My fellow YPAG member Ashgan has written a blog about making the podcast which is well worth a read (After finishing reading mine of course!) arc-gm.nihr.ac.uk/news/blog/BLOG-hidden-live

I felt like we bonded as a group, the organising team and the 10 young people together! I didn’t want this experience to end. The ARC really valued the groups input, they said they didn’t want to let us go! That was lovely, I felt heard, seen, and valued. I applied to be part of the Young People Advisory Group and was offered a place which meant so much to me. 

I remember being nervous before our first meeting, 20 young people from across Greater Manchester all from very different backgrounds, we were given lots of time and activities to help us get to know each other over zoom, and like the hidden meetings these were fun. Over time we learned more about how public involvement works in research and how we can use our own lived experience to help research teams to improve their research plans.

I heard about  the many typed of research roles, I remember one meeting where we were meeting a senior lecturer and health economist who is the deputy theme lead for ARC-GM's Economic Sustainability Theme, none of which made any sense to me before the meeting, but by the end of the meeting I had met a man called Luke with a Geordie accent who very patiently explained that “wider determinants of health” are things outside of our control like where we live and that power to change what happens in the places we live is effected by people with power so we need to do research to collect lots of information to show government and policy makers where things are not fair.

Luke asked us questions and listened to our views on the “wider determinants of health” I felt empowered to be able to be part of this work as a public contributor and I felt valued when sharing my thoughts and experiences.

I have learnt so much over the last 2 years and am about to go into my second year of university! I have been sent lots of opportunities to get involved in research discussions and I enjoy learning. I don’t feel any pressure to join everything and I am encouraged to put myself first when managing my own time. We have a WhatsApp group for all the YPAG members, its great getting reminders about meetings and letting us know that opportunities have been emailed out to us so we can check our emails. We also share lots of photos of our food and share recommendations of where to eat, I feel like I have made some great friends.

No idea how to finish a blog but thought id tell you another story…

Last week we had a catch up meeting about one of the pieces of research I have been involved in; this particular piece of work was interesting to me as it was about evaluating how hospitals receive help to improve care.  This is a national health service evaluation and with all my experience receiving NHS services I wanted to know more so joined the group, we had our first meeting in November and like other ARC-GM meetings, they are very informal and we are given lots of time and opportunity to ask questions to understand what we are there to discuss, I learn from the presentation and I also learn when others ask questions and the research team answer them. so, when its time for the discussion I feel like I can make points important to me.

The lead researcher for this work is another senior lecturer and the lead for the Implementation Science theme at ARC-GM and again you instantly picture someone in a lab coat who does not smile however, to us it’s Paul with the big smile and the Scottish accent.

Paul and the research team gave us an update on all the interviews they had done so far and where they are up to in the project, what they have found out and what the next steps are, Paul said something else in that meeting, he said how the points we had raised at the first meeting were really important and that he had fed them back to NHS England!!!

I felt so proud! For our whole YPAG but also proud for me, I am making a difference and I hope I can be a role model for other young people especially young people who may have a disability or be using a wheelchair, because if I can make change so can they.

Shuhaney, August 2023.