Being me - supporting children and young people

What keeps children in care happy, healthy and well? Care-experienced children and young people worked with RCPCH &Us to create these free resources, including 'health and wellbeing passports', a poster and games to help share who they are, how they are feeling and what support they would like - as well as top tips for doctors.
Being Me (letters spelled out in playdough)

The Being Me resources - which you can download below - were developed over five months through workshops and activity sessions with more than 20 Children in Care Council members at Warrington Borough Council and Knowsley Council and with RCPCH &Us, and launched at RCPCH Conference and exhibition in May 2019.

What do children say?

The project started by thinking about the key things needed for children and young people to be emotionally and physically healthy, happy and well. They said...

Doctors need to remember that sometimes children’s hearts are broken

We need to know how to sleep more, how to stay calm, how to eat well and to be more active to stay well

We need someone to talk to about our sad feelings

Emojis are an easy and fun way for us to tell doctors how we are feeling when we can’t fully explain or don’t want to. Children can point to an emoji or draw with their doctor

About the resources

Being Me poster: "Here are some feelings you might like to share. You can write or draw on the other side and add your own." Children's drawings of emotions such as 'Happiness', 'Anger' and 'Isolated'
Being Me poster - you can download this below

The group shared ideas and views on improving waiting areas, improving the use of technology and creating better online resources.

They then developed the Being Me resources, such as the poster pictured here to help patients talk with their doctors and nurses, and health and wellbeing passports - we have versions for children and young people in care, and for those without care experiences

The Children in Care Council members created these resources to help other children and young people like themselves share their feelings, talk about their experiences and get the best health outcomes possible. They're fully transferable to consider all children and young people with specialist health care experiences.

You can download the resources for free below, or for more details, please contact and_us@rcpch.ac.uk.