Speak for yourself

Watch a video of Sheila Caldecott, mother of a patient of Haughton Thorney Medical Centres, explain why she has helped to design a questionnaire finding out about the health seeking behaviour of teenagers, where they are learning about their health and what sorts of topics they are interested in. She is keen for teenagers to fill out an anonymous questionnaire so that we can identify better their needs and then try to ensure that services are in place to fulfil such a need. If you know any teenagers that may be interested then please ask them to fill the questionnaire in so that we can try to gather as much opinion as possible.

We have now published the preliminary results of the survey for you to see and share with others – please scroll further down to see the results. However please do the questionaire even so if you have not done so that we can get even more answers and share them with everybody else. Contact Haughton Thornley Medical Centres on [email protected] or Sheila on [email protected] for further information.

At a later date, we will make a separate page with the resources found further down more accessible once everybody has had a chance to see the survey and how we went about collecting data for this page. We would like to thank all the schools, youth organisations, teenagers and local Care Record Development Board who have taken part in this questionnaire to help us to provide this resource. We hope it comes in handy for you. 

Don’t forget to fill out the questionnaire at the BOTTOM of this web page to tell us what you think of the information here AFTER you have seen the resources we have provided for you. This is also your chance to add any other suggestions that you think may help to cater for teenagers too.

Click Here to take survey

Presentation given by Shaila Caldecott to the Local Care Record Development Board

Results to date of survey

Total replies 216 (males 85 or 39.4% of total, female 131 or 60.6% of total)

The ages of the children responding to the questionnaire ranged between 9 and 18 with the average just below 13. The graph below shows most children were aged between 11 and 14

A selection of the comments received to date:

Learning about body conscious issues in young people

I think more teenagers relatively need to take a leaf of information about young sex and pregnancy…they do not know how much trouble it will cause and they need to know the facts or help lines or where to go for this that’s confidential

You could put out more leaflets on teen issues

How to help a parent or relative when they’re going into hospital

How to politely suggest to a grandparent they need a hearing aid

More help with smoking

Mobile numbers for help for anything that happens to you or a friend

A free confidential line so teens can confide in someone

I think the issues are with teenagers now adays is smokingi, drinking getting pregnant at a young age and drugs

I think that the issues are that teenagers drink too much and take drugs which can damage their health

Teenagers should be more involved in these things so that they feel more involved with these things so that they don’t think they are the only people feeling or having these things done to them. Most teenagers are embarrassed. Teenagers should be more aware of the things that can result through drinking or smoking or taking drugs. Most teenagers are doing these things not because of peer pressure but they see their parents doing this and thinking that it is ok and that they are fine doing then they will be ok

Pregnancy, smoking, self harming, running away from home, drugs

More practical lessons about issues like pregnancy, guns, knives, drugs eg teens should be able to do more practical things to do with these things instead of just sitting and listening because its boring and none will want to listen or do it again. So if these were made more fun to learn about by doing activities about it people want to do more and carry on. 

A professional helper for those children who find the need to talk to someone if they are getting bullied, abused etc and someone to talk to if children are struggling but are too ashamed to tell anybody they aren’t clever because they might get bullied because of it. Naughty unit so naughty people cannot bully children etc

To show teens that if you are tall or small, brown, blonde, ginger hair, spots or eczema. That everyone should feel happy and confident about their bodies and just be yourself and don’t look or dress like somebody else JUST BE YOURSELF

I think that we should have after school clubs, lessons in school, meetings / talks in community centres and / or have private lessons.

Teenagers are more concerned about how they look and I think acne would be a good thing they would like to know more about

Don’t tell us in lessons about it, do it in assembly where we have time and we actually listen to teachers

Could you make me confident about myself